Thai wildlife officials reported on Saturday that more than half of 147 tigers seized in 2016 from an infamous Buddhist temple in Thailand’s Kanchanaburi Province* have died from disease.

According to local media reports, Thai officials said that 54 of 85 rescued tigers had died at Khao Prathap Chang Wildlife Sanctuary, while 32 of 62 tigers had died at Khao Son Wildlife Sanctuary, both in neighboring Ratchaburi Province, over a three-year period since being moved to the sanctuaries, despite being receiving treatment from veterinarians.

Officials said that the big cats may have died from the canine distemper virus, or from laryngeal paralysis, which causes an obstruction to the upper airway, as they had had exhibited symptoms before arriving at the sanctuaries. An unidentified source cited by the Thai PBS World news website said that most of the confiscated tigers were captive-bred Siberian tigers and therefore lacked natural immunity, rendering them susceptible to diseases.

The director-general of Thailand’s Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation, Thanya Netithammakun, said that officials were investigating the cause of the deaths and the results should be known by next week.

Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua Yanasampanno, popularly known as the “Tiger Temple,” a Buddhist monastery to the west of the capital Bangkok, promoted itself as a wildlife sanctuary. The temple received its first tiger cub from local villagers in 1999, but it died soon afterward. The monastery subsequently received several tiger cubs to care for, which were allowed to breed. As the number of tigers living at the temple grew, the monastery became a popular tourist attraction, charging admission to visitors who could pay to have their photographs taken with the temple’s resident tigers and bottle feed their cubs as a means of raising funds to care for the animals.

Prakit Vongsrivattanakul, deputy director-general of the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation, was quoted as saying that the big cats were particularly susceptible to the canine distemper virus.

“When we took the tigers in, we noted that they had no immune system due to inbreeding,” he said. “We treated them as symptoms came up.” (Independent)