Ngo Xuan Tung, Yahoo News 9 Jan 08;
Vietnamese police came face-to-face with two live tigers they found in a passenger car in central Hanoi when they busted an illegal wildlife trafficking gang this week, media reports said Wednesday.
The wild cats had been sedated by the animal smugglers but awoke after the police raid and started chewing up the seats and interior of the car that the traffickers had used to take the tigers to a client in the capital.
Officers from the Hanoi Environmental Police had to knock the 50-kilogram (110-pound) carnivores out again with drugs to take them to a wild animal rescue centre after the bust Monday evening, state media said.
When they searched the traffickers' homes on the outskirts of Hanoi, police found four more tigers cut up in a freezer, seven live bears and bear parts, rhinoceros horns and elephant tusks, the An Ninh Thu Do newspaper said.
Two people were detained by police, reports said.
One of them told police that he had in the past bought two tiger carcasses from a Hanoi zoo, the Thanh Nien daily reported.
Vietnam, where poachers have decimated wildlife in most forests, is a major trafficking hub for the illegal trade, linking supplier countries such as Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar with consumers in China and elsewhere.
With rising affluence, Vietnam has also become a growing destination for wildlife meat and the wines and medicines made from the animals which have traditionally been believed to have healing and tonic properties.
"It just illustrates that the trade is going on unabated," said Sulma Warne, regional coordinator of the wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC.
A tiger's skin, meat and bones can fetch up to 25,000 dollars, Warne said.
"If something is not done about this -- and the people involved are not appropriately punished so that they won't do it again -- it won't be long until there are no more tigers left in this part of the world," he told AFP.
With Vietnam's rainforests now reduced to a patchwork, fewer than 100 tigers, 100 elephants and 10 rhinos are believed to survive in the wild.
Exploitation for the illegal trade now rivals habitat destruction as a major threat to the survival of many species in Southeast Asia, experts say.
Communist Vietnam has signed treaties against the trade, including the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, but enforcement remains patchy due to limited funding and corruption.
Authorities have booked some successes in recent months, arresting four people in September who were caught preparing two dead tigers and other illegal wildlife for traditional medicine in a Hanoi city apartment.
In that raid, police also found ivory tusks, a stuffed tiger, more than 10 cow heads, three deer heads and large alcohol bottles filled with snakes.
Last month, a Ho Chi Minh City court jailed eight men for up to 11 years for poisoning a tiger to sell its body parts for medicinal balm.
In the latest bust, police said the tigers had been bought as cubs from a trader for a total of 7,000 dollars and kept caged in a city district since last July, and were being sold to a client for 20,000 dollars.
