Soraida Salwala, founder of the Friends of the Asian Elephant, continues her fight to protect Thai Elephants, this time by testifying against the President of Wildlife Fund Thailand. In an email to Windy Borman, Soriada writes:
The wildlife merchant is the president of Wildlife Fund Thailand who used to be Secretary General and later became the Director of the Zoological Organization. He later opened a company, private zoo, [and] restaurant dealing with wildlife trade. We, about ten organizations working for the conservation of wildlife[,] opposed [he behavior] and sent our open letter. He laid off over forty staff and closed the office temporarily, claiming there is no money to run it.
I cannot talk much about the case since it is in court but our aim is to remove him from the role in WFT, [but] the Board is on his side. If he wants to do business in trading wildlife, he should have left WFT [a] long time ago and not [sit] there knowing where and when we were about to alert the authorities to arrest the illegal trade and all. He asked the staff to withdraw attacking many projects which have wildlife in their aquarium or zoos or whatever.
So, we have asked the court to remove him from his post.
I am the member of this WFT, it was founded by my family doctor, the late DR. Boonsong Lekagul.
Soraida
Soraida is featured in the upcoming documentary The Eyes of Thailand, set to release in 2010 and Produced/Directed by Windy Borman and D.V.A. Productions.
