The law is very effective to stop the local people from hunting the tiger, they will only hunt if they have the approval of the local official. It isn't so easy to turn a dead tiger into money. The meat has to be transported very quickly to a place with ice and a big freezer to preserve it. Then the meat must be transported overland to Vietnam or China. At every step of the way there needs to be substantial bribes.

Tiger meat only becomes valuable once it's in Vietnam or China.


Besides hunting there are many other issues. Logs are being cut forest is being destroyed every day and the wood is shipped to Vietnam. Vietnam is now one of the worlds largest furniture manufacturers, yet they have no trees. All the wood for Vietnam comes from Laos.

Ultimately if you have forest you can have tigers. A fairly small number of animals are enough to produce more and to still have a viable gene base, but once you destroy the forests there is nowhere left to live.

Until Laos stopps the cutting of it's forests you can say goodbye to many large predators, leopard, marbled cat, 2 types of canine, guar, the list is long. Laos has one of the last intact forests in South East Asia. What a very valuable resource to squander only to make some bribes from selling logs or rubber to make tires for Chinese cars.

When you have something very beautiful that no one else has it's worth a lot of money, if you throw it away it will never come back.

Good Luck Laos.