New Delhi: The five baby orangutans seized in Odisha are the latest reminder of how far India’s illegal wildlife trade can reach. But one of its most important and least discussed corridors lies nearly 1,500 km away, along Mizoram’s border with Myanmar, where exotic animals come in and India’s endangered wildlife goes out.
In the last few years, orangutans, kangaroos, exotic birds, reptiles, and animals native to far-off parts of the world were intercepted in Mizoram. The state is a hotspot for the import of such animals, but is also a key in the export of leopards, tigers and pangolins from India towards Myanmar and then other international markets.
Wildlife activist Ajay Dubey calls this “double way traffic”.
“Earlier there used to be wildlife trafficking routes through states bordering Nepal and Bangladesh too, but as these routes are used more often, traffickers often choose to migrate to newer ones,” he said. “Now the main illegal trade routes run through Mizoram.”
India shares a 1,643 km border with Myanmar, and nearly 510 km of that stretch spans six districts of Mizoram. Even in the state, two districts are notorious for such illegal trade — Champai district and the India-Myanmar border around the Zokhawthar district.
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The hotspots
The scale of illegal wildlife trade in these regions became apparent in 2022, when authorities seized 468 exotic animals near Champhai. In 2024, 49 exotic animals and birds were tracked down to Zokhawthar, and in 2025, officials found 31 exotic animals in Champhai, including Patagonian maras, albino Burmese pythons, and even African spurred tortoises.
An analysis of Pangolin seizures across India between 1991 and 2022 revealed that over 8,600 pangolins were caught being trafficked across 426 seizures.
A 2025 case of tiger poachers caught smuggling tigers in MP and Maharashtra also admitted to using a route through Mizoram.
“Despite ongoing efforts by enforcement agencies, the challenges posed by the region’s rugged terrain, sparse population, and limited infrastructure make it a tough battleground in the fight against illegal activities,” a Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) statement from 2024 read.
According to Dubey, isolated cases where poachers or smugglers have been caught are hardly enough. He has often reported such poachers to forest officials, but then the onus lies on those officials to follow up the network and track the origins and destinations of these trade routes.
“This isn’t just a threat to wildlife, but it is also a security threat. These routes are used by criminal syndicates for large financial transactions and other unlawful activities. It is a failure of several agencies. It is a failure of the BSF too,” Dubey said.
(Edited by Stela Dey)