They Kill at Least One Tiger Every Week
They Kill at Least One Tiger Every Week. Now We Know Who "They" Are.
Big Cat Rescuers, I need you to read this carefully — because what I'm about to share with you is one of the most disturbing and important wildlife crime investigations I've seen in years.
Earth League International (ELI) — a nonprofit made up of former intelligence, law enforcement, and security professionals who go undercover inside criminal networks — has just released the findings of Operation SANDOKAN. It is the most extensive undercover investigation into wildlife trafficking ever conducted in Cambodia, and what they found is staggering.
These networks kill at least one tiger every week.
Let that sink in.
What Operation SANDOKAN uncovered
For over a year, ELI's undercover investigators embedded themselves directly inside wildlife trafficking networks operating in Cambodia, with additional intelligence gathering in Laos and across the broader Lower Mekong region. They weren't reading about these criminals from a distance — they were sitting across from them, gathering firsthand information.
What they found were some of the largest trafficking networks ELI has ever encountered — networks that trade tigers, ivory, rhino horns, pangolins, and dozens of other species at both wholesale and retail levels. These aren't small-time poachers. They operate through physical shops and online platforms, with supply chains stretching across Africa, Europe, Russia, and South Asia.
And they are protected.
The investigation uncovered deep collusion between Chinese criminal networks and Cambodian political and business elites. Traffickers openly named their protectors — not out of carelessness, but as a deliberate show of strength. This is the reality of wildlife crime at the highest levels: it isn't happening in the shadows despite the authorities. In many cases, it's happening because of them.
Scam compounds as wildlife trafficking hubs
One of the most alarming — and previously underreported — findings in the Operation SANDOKAN report is the role of scam compounds as major drivers of the illegal wildlife trade. These compounds, notorious for enslaving people in cyber fraud operations, are apparently also functioning as nodes in wildlife trafficking networks. The convergence of these crimes is not accidental. Organized crime diversifies. Where there is corruption, impunity, and infrastructure for one type of crime, other crimes flourish alongside it.
Why this matters for big cats specifically
Tigers are among the most endangered big cats on the planet, and demand for their parts — bones, skins, teeth — continues to drive poaching across Asia. When the report tells us these networks are killing at least one tiger every week, that is not an abstraction. Every single one of those tigers is an individual animal, part of a wild population that cannot absorb those losses and survive.
At Big Cat Rescue, we have spent decades fighting the exotic cat trade here in the United States, and we know that the crisis at home doesn't exist in a vacuum. The same forces that fuel demand for captive tigers in America are connected to the global networks that poach wild tigers in Asia. It is all one web.
What ELI is doing about it
ELI's approach is unique and, I believe, essential. They don't just document — they generate actionable intelligence and share it with relevant U.S. government agencies and international enforcement partners to support real investigations. Sensitive findings were deliberately withheld from the public version of this report to protect ongoing operations. That discipline matters. This is serious, professional work.
They have also released a short film produced with Wildlight that offers a rare and sobering look at what it actually takes to conduct intelligence operations inside these criminal networks. I encourage you to watch it.
You can access the full Operation SANDOKAN report at earthleagueinternational.org/operation-sandokan-report.
What you can do
Share this post. Talk about it. The traffickers operating in the Lower Mekong are counting on the fact that most people in the world have no idea this is happening at this scale. Every person who reads this report — or even just understands that organized criminal networks with political protection are killing a tiger every week — is one more person who can demand better from their government, their supply chains, and the world.
These animals are depending on us to be loud.
Carole Baskin, Founder and CEO of Big Cat RescueBigCatRescue.org
Source: Earth League International — Operation SANDOKAN: Unmasking the Lower Mekong's Biggest Wildlife Traffickers, June 2026. earthleagueinternational.org/operation-sandokan-report/
