86 tigers rescued from Thai temple in 2016 have tragically died in government custody from viral disease
Warning: Some of the images in the story might be disturbing to some readers.
More than half of the 150 tigers that were rescued from an infamous Tiger Temple in Bangkok, Thailand, in 2016 are reportedly dead.
The Buddhist temple in Kanchanaburi, in the west of Bangkok, was a popular tourist attraction until it was closed down by authorities in 2016 after allegations of animal trafficking.
Visitors used to take selfies with tigers and bottle-feed cubs before it was raided by the police when they received reports of the temple owners selling animal parts on the black market. Amid growing global pressure over wildlife trafficking, authorities discovered 40 dead tiger cubs in a freezer and more corpses preserved in jars.
Nearly 20 such jars were seized from the property, some of which also contained tiger organs. Some of the animals being preserved inside the temple had reportedly been dead for more than five years.
Although the temple initially boasted of being a safe harbor for the tigers, operating almost like a wildlife sanctuary, it was soon investigated for animal abuse and trafficking.
Adisorn Nuchdamrong from Thailand's Department of National Parks told Reuters at the time that the dead cubs "must be of some value for the temple", but what it could possibly be was beyond him.
There were also allegations of the monks at the temple illegally breeding the tigers. Some of the tourists also claimed that a few of the tigers appeared to be drugged. However, the temple has denied the accusations.
The Thaiger recently reported that due to living their entire lives in captivity, the immune systems of the tigers had weakened, leaving them incapable of fighting serious ailments.
One such disease was laryngeal tongue paralysis, which affected 86 of the 147 confiscated tigers, whose health condition steadily declined until they died. The Thailand Wildlife Conservation Office took the responsibility of capturing and relocating the tigers following the accusations.