Police in the northern province of Ha Tinh have caught a man cooking tiger bones to make tiger bone paste at home.

The discovery was made at the house of Nguyen Khanh Thuyet, in Thach Tan Commune, Thach Ha District yesterday afternoon.

When police, acting on a tip-off, raided the house, they caught Thuyet cooking tiger bones in two large pots in the kitchen.

Earlier that morning, a local resident reported to the provincial environmental police that a man had bought a dead tiger in the commune. 

Thuyet admitted that he was indeed making paste from tiger bones. 

While searching the house, police found one tiger hide, a set of claws possibly of a tiger, and a head of a chamois (endangered species belong to Group 1B) placed in a freezer. 

Police reported their findings and seized all the tiger bones and the above items.

Police later handed all the detained items over to the provincial Forest Protection Sub-department for investigation.

Tiger bone paste is one of the rarest and most expensive products used in traditional medicine.

The tiger is one of many endangered species that need to be protected all over the world. The main reasons the tiger is endangered – in most cases, critically – are illegal hunting for their pelts, meat and body parts (often for use in folk medicine), and loss of their natural habitat from logging and deforestation.