VietNamNet Bridge – A joint inspection team in Hanoi on Monday caught a local restaurant’s owner directing her workers to illegally cook a tiger skeleton, weighing about 150 kg, into tiger bone glue for sale.

Such an act violated the country’s regulations on protection of rare and precious wild animals, the team said.

On the third floor of the Tay Bac Quan restaurant in Nhan Chinh Ward, Thanh Xuan District, anti-environmental crime police officers found two workers processing a large tiger skeleton to cook into tiger bone glue.

They had removed the flesh from the skeleton and then put the bones into a large cooking tank on a LPG stove.

After examining the bones, Dr. Dang Tat The, head of Living Being Resources and Ecology Research Department, said the tiger belonged to group IB, which, under Governmental Decree 32/ND-CP, is the group of rare wild animals forbidden to be exploited or used for commercial purposes.

The police also seized 25 kg of bones of chamois.

Nguyen Thi Thanh, 45, the restaurant’s owner, told the inspectors that she bought the tiger’s carcass from a person named Binh in Thanh Hoa City for VND180 million (US$8,560) and the chamois bones for VND2 million.

The police are tracking down the origin of the tiger.

Thanh is a repeat offender, police said.

In September 2007, the Hanoi police caught Thanh and her two workers making tiger bone glue from the bodies of two tigers, about 200 kg each, at her house in the district. The police seized 7 kg of tiger bone glue on the scene.

They also seized 4 ivories weighing 30 kg, 8 heads of bulls, 5 front limps of tibetan bear, and four tanks of liquor soaked with copperheads and deer legs.

For such violations of regulations on rare and precious wild animal protection, she was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

After serving the sentence, she opened the restaurant and relapsed into crime, police said.

VietNamNet/Tuoi Tre