Scottish adventurer Aldo Kane uncovers the shocking world of South East Asia’s illegal tiger farms in Tigers: Hunting the Traffickers on BBC2
In Tigers: Hunting the Traffickers, BBC2’s eye-opening documentary, Aldo Kane reveals the industrial scale of tiger trafficking across South East Asia, which fuels the demand for products made from tiger carcasses.
The explorer puts his Army training to good use as he covertly films how and where this lucrative trade is carried out.
From a fattened tiger waiting to be slaughtered to order, to dead cubs being hauled out of a freezer, his discoveries are pretty harrowing.
The presentation of his evidence at a Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species provides a final twist in this powerful film.
Aldo (pictured top with an anti-poaching unit), 42, tells us more…
What will shock viewers in Tigers: Hunting the Traffickers?
Unless you work in wildlife crime and investigation, you’re not going to know that people kill tigers, skin them, and put them in vats of wine, or boil down the carcass to make hardened resin known as tiger glue, which is more valuable than cocaine.
Why is this trade less known about than, say, ivory poaching?
The tiger trade is hidden from sight, unlike the ivory or rhino trades, where the brutality is on show for the world to see.
Trafficked tigers are locked behind closed doors, hidden from public view.
The world is largely unaware of the brutal way in which they are farmed and slaughtered for their bones.
What shocked you the most?
Seeing just how large some tiger facilities were – some had hundreds of tigers locked up in cages.
Breaking into these facilities is a vital part of bringing the truth to the wider world.
But it was incredibly difficult to witness these majestic creatures being kept behind bars, when they should be in the jungle.
For full listings, see our TV Guide.
TV Times rating: ****
