140 Exotic Animals, Birds Rescued from Mizoram's Champhai; Myanmar Coup to Blame? News18 Explains

A total of 140 exotic animals and birds were rescued in a joint operation by the Mizoram Police with the state Excise and Narcotics department near the Indo-Myanmar border in Champhai district. The animals, suspected to be smuggled from Myanmar, were handed over to the Superintendent, Custom Preventive Force of Champhai, officials said Saturday.

The team rescued 30 tortoises, 2 monkeys, 2 marmosets monkeys, 22 pythons, 18 Sumatran water monitors, 55 crocodiles (hatchlings), 4 flame powerbirds, 4 servel cats, 2 marmosets and 1 albino wallaby, Mizoram police told ANI.

Mizoram Inspector General of Police (Headquarters) John Neihlaia told PTI three persons have been arrested for transporting the consignment.

Mizoram’s Myanmar Link

The northeastern state has registered a surge in the smuggling of drugs, contrabands and exotic animal species following the military coup in neighbouring Myanmar in February last year. Official told PTI in September that Champhai district in the eastern part of Mizoram, which shares a border with Myanmar, has replaced Manipur’s Moreh as the main transit route to bring in smuggled goods, including wildlife animals.

In September, 41 exotic wild animals and birds, suspected to be smuggled from Myanmar through Mizoram, were rescued from two vehicles in Kamrup district of Assam by the police. The Mizoram Police had also rescued 468 exotic animals suspected to be smuggled from Myanmar in Champhai in May. The rescued animals included four tortoises, 11 snakes, 442 lizards, four toed sloths, two beavers, four pattos and one wild cat.

Following the bust, police held a major meeting of the district wildlife control sub-unit on the issue. Police had said there is a dire need to activate district wildlife crime control sub-units across the state headed by SPs to curb the activities.

Surge in Illegal Online Wildlife Purchases

The surge in the smuggling of exotic species was also noted by World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in April which found that the illegal purchase of wildlife online in Myanmar rose 74 per cent from last year as enforcement of bans on such transactions weakened amid political turmoil.

The number of such dealings rose 74 per cent over a year earlier to 11,046, nearly all of them involving sales of live animals. For the 173 species traded, 54 are threatened with global extinction, the report said.

Head of WWF’s Asia-Pacific regional cybercrime project, Shaun Martin was quoted as saying that the monitoring of the online wildlife trade showed different species being kept close together, sometimes in the same cage. “With Asia’s track record as a breeding ground for many recent zoonotic diseases, this sharp uptick in online trade of wildlife in Myanmar is extremely concerning,” he said.

The study by WWF in Myanmar focused on trade online of animals and other creatures inside the country, though there were some imports from neighbouring Thailand, mainly of birds such as hornbills and salmon crested cockatoos, and of crocodiles, to India.

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