Five baby orangutans expose India's frightening wildlife trade
FIVE baby orangutans abandoned in an Indian forest have exposed a “massive” exotic wildlife trade, with traffickers smuggling increasingly rare species into the country, say experts.
Five infant orangutans found in an Indian forest have highlighted a vast illegal wildlife trade, according to experts. Traffickers are increasingly smuggling rare species, including apes, into India, driven by demand from wealthy consumers seeking exotic pets to display on social media. In the eastern Odisha state, rangers discovered the young orangutans, aged around one and a half years, in Balasore.
Cared for at a zoo, the monkeys are native only to Indonesia's Sumatra and Borneo islands. Indonesia has requested their return. A June report by Humane World for Animals India revealed a steep increase in seizures, estimating India's exotic pet market is worth US$42.6 million in 2024. Orangutans and gibbons, small apes, are being trafficked from Southeast Asia's rainforests.
A senior Wildlife Crime Control Bureau official stated that thousands of social media influencers promote exotic species as pets, fueling demand. Over 40,000 people registered exotic animals through a government voluntary disclosure scheme in 2021, though the true number is likely much higher. Former TRAFFIC official Shekhar Kumar Niraj noted that private zoos have violated laws at a "very alarming scale."
In 2022, WWF-India documented 56 seizures involving about 4,000 exotic animals. Recent seizures include two endangered gibbons in Mumbai and a trafficked orangutan in Maharashtra. However, experts warn that the actual scale of the trade is far greater than what is revealed by seizure data. The porous border between Myanmar and India's northeast is a key trafficking route, with land routes from Southeast Asia contributing to the problem.
Written by urgent.news from New Straits Times's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
