BHOPAL: International smugglers linked with various wild animal poaching gangs in India are abandoning the Nepal-Tibet route and instead using the North East-Myanmar corridor to traffic wild animal parts and live exotic animals into China, investigations by forest and wildlife enforcement agencies have revealed.
Interrogation of ten members of an inter-state gang of poachers from Madhya Pradesh, busted in Chandrapur in Maharashtra in January 2025, and questioning of an international Pangolin smuggler, L Kunga, arrested recently from Mizoram, showed that traffickers are increasingly relying on the new route to move tiger and leopard parts and live exotic species.
China has emerged as a major destination for the illegal wildlife trade, one of the world’s most lucrative transnational crimes. Smugglers target a wide range of endangered and protected species, particularly Pangolins, Rhino Horns, Tiger Parts, Elephant Tusks (ivory), and Turtles and Tortoises.
Officials said the prime drivers of demand for wild animal parts in China include traditional Chinese medicine, use as status symbols and for investment, exotic cuisine, and the growing market for exotic pets.
For decades, smugglers traditionally moved wildlife parts and live animals into China through Nepal and Tibet. However, improved, coordinated law enforcement along the Nepal border has drastically reduced such trafficking.
A sustained crackdown by enforcement agencies at major Tibetan population bases in India, especially Delhi’s Majnu ka Tila area, has also curbed the smuggling of dead and live wildlife species into China via Nepal and Tibet. Several persons associated with wildlife trafficking were arrested in these operations, key sources in the Madhya Pradesh forest department said.
In contrast, trafficking of wild animal parts and live exotic species is rising sharply through the North East-Myanmar route, particularly through Mizoram, officials said.
“The international Pangolin smuggler L Kunga, who has been wanted for the last ten years by wildlife enforcement agencies in multiple states, including Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Mizoram, was arrested last month in a joint operation from Kolasib in northern Mizoram. He was wanted by the MP State Forest Department’s state tiger strike force (STSF) in a 2015 case of Pangolin smuggling,” a senior forest department official in Bhopal told TNIE on Thursday.
Originally from Myanmar, Kunga has made several startling revelations to the MP forest department’s wildlife crime wing, especially about the growing use of the North East, particularly the Mizoram-Myanmar corridor, for wildlife smuggling from India.
While Mizoram’s Champhai district has emerged as the most active hotspot for smuggling animal parts and live exotic animals into Myanmar for onward delivery to China, Manipur’s Moreh town earlier served as the prime route into the neighbouring country, which is currently ruled by a military junta. After entering Myanmar, the animal parts are transported to the illegal wildlife market in Mong La, located on the Myanmar-China border, to meet demand from Chinese and Vietnamese buyers.
“What is contributing to North East (Mizoram and Manipur)-Myanmar becoming the most preferred route of wild animal smugglers for supplying animal parts to Chinese and Vietnamese buyers, is the weakened environmental law enforcement and border security in Myanmar following the 2021 military coup, the largely unfenced India-Myanmar border, and the use of improved infrastructure to boost road connectivity along the Indo-Myanmar border,” the official added.