Five poachers were each given five years in prison by a court in western Thailand on Monday for killing a mother tiger and her cub in a national park the previous year.
The Kanchanaburi provincial court concluded that the five men violated conservation rules when they killed the protected animals in Thong Pha Phum National Park before skinning and burning their remains to make them ready for sale on the black market.
The tiger parts were taken by park authorities when they found them in January of last year.
Photos shot in the bush and released by authorities revealed the skins of two flayed tigers.
Photos taken nearby also revealed bones and cadaver fragments.
The court rejected the men’s argument that they had killed the tigers in revenge for attacks on livestock, ruling they “should have felt protective of nature” given that they lived in a community near the forest.
Tigers are an endangered species with only about 4,500 remaining in the wild, according to the the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). Though their numbers have increased in recent years, WWF says fewer than 200 of the big cats remain in national parks and wildlife sanctuaries across Thailand.
Poaching, one of the biggest threats to tigers’ survival, is driven largely by demand in China and Vietnam for their bones, skins and other body parts used in traditional medicine.
The safety and effectiveness of traditional Chinese medicine is still heavily debated in China, where it has both adherents and skeptics.
Though many of the remedies in TCM have been in use for hundreds of years, critics argue that there is often little verifiable scientific evidence or peer reviewed studies to support their supposed benefits.
Thong Pha Phum National Park Chief Charoen Jaichon welcomed the court ruling.
“I’m happy that justice has been delivered,” he told CNN on Tuesday. “This is a strong warning to any illegal hunters in Thailand’s national parks.”