Officers from the Wildlife Conservation Division of Protected Area Regional Office 16 (Chiang Mai), led by division director Pornarin Khumthong, searched a house on Charoensuk Road in Chang Phueak subdistrict on the afternoon of September 18. They didn’t go alone. Police from the Natural Resources and Environmental Crime Suppression Division, a Region 5 special operations unit, the Northern Special Operations Unit 3, plus Mueang Chiang Mai district and municipal officers all showed up too, armed with a warrant from the Chiang Mai Provincial Court dated the same day.
The tip came from a concerned neighbor who’d noticed someone keeping a lion in a residential house and thought that maybe, just maybe, someone should look into whether that’s legal.
It wasn’t. Inside, officers found a lion cub with no microchip and no paperwork showing how it got there, a straightforward violation of Section 19 of the Wild Animal Reservation and Protection Act B.E. 2562. The cub has been placed temporarily at Chiang Mai Night Safari while the case proceeds.
Officers detained a woman identified only as Ms. Wang and handed her to investigators at Chang Phueak police station, where she now faces three charges: unauthorized possession of a controlled wild animal (up to six months in jail, a fine of up to 100,000 baht), running a hotel without a license, and operating a business hazardous to public health without one. Turns out the lion wasn’t the only thing being kept off the books.
Investigators say they’re now working backward to trace where the white lion cub actually came from, and looking into the money behind it.
