The #1 source for news about monkeys and apes

[Josh Greenman <joshg1973 AT yahoo.com>]

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/100846/1/.html

14 August 2004 

Thai police find 'cremated' orangutans after countrywide search 

BANGKOK : Thai police have found dozens of rare orangutans that a scandal-hit 
private zoo
claimed had been cremated after dying from pneumonia.

The 36 animals were found alive in small cages at Bangkok's Safari World 
during a police
probe into claims they had been smuggled from Borneo or the Indonesian island 
of Sumatra
for staged kick-boxing bouts at the zoo.

The fights -- which saw the animals dressed in boxing gloves and Thai boxing 
shorts --
have been stopped and zoo owner Pin Kiewkacha has been charged for illegally 
importing
the animals and faces four years in jail if found guilty.

A police swoop last week uncovered only 69 of the 110 suspected smuggled 
animals. 

Zoo officials claimed the 41 missing animals were cremated after they died of 
pneumonia
but police believed they had been spirited away to hamper the smuggling probe.

Pin later led police to 36 orangutans kept at a special quarantine section at 
the zoo and
claimed the saga of the missing animals was down to a "big misunderstanding", 
according
to the Bangkok Post Saturday. He said the other five had died.

Police believed that they been brought back from hiding places around 
Thailand, Police
Colonel Wichit Nuntawong was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

"We went looking for the apes and he (Pin) finally ran out of places to hide 
them," the
officer said.

"The law is on our side. We will not let this go away, we expect to lay more 
charges
against Mr Pin's employees."

Thailand says it is intent on stamping out the illegal wildlife trade ahead 
of a
Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) conference 
being held
here later this year.

The World Wide Fund for Nature has claimed fewer than 30,000 of the 
red-haired apes
remain in the world and they could become extinct in as little as 20 years if 
the decline
continues.

It said 91 percent of the orangutan population in Borneo, shared by Malaysia, 
Indonesia
and Brunei, and the Sumatra islands had disappeared over the past century.

The World Wide Fund for Nature blames the shrinking population on commercial 
logging,
clearance for oil palm plantations and agriculture, hunting and poaching for 
the bush
meat and pet trades, and forest fires.

- AFP