Malaysia takes action against wildlife smuggling after Indian officials raise concerns Siddharth Prabhakar, The New Indian Express March 15, 2025 Two weeks after a delegation of top Indian officials raised the issue of repeated seizures of exotic wildlife species (at Indian airports) smuggled from Malaysia, a senior minister there inspected the Kuala Lumpur airport on March 7 where he emphasised on taking effective enforcement measures to eradicate such illegal activities. In an official release recently, Nik Nazmi bin Nik Ahmad, Malaysia’s Minister for Natural Resources and Environmental Sustainability, acknowledged that the country is used as a transit point for the smuggling of high-value wildlife-like exotic reptiles, elephant tusks and rhinoceros horns. He shared Indian data which showed an increase in exotic wildlife seizures from Malaysia going up from eight in 2023 to 12 in 2024. The Kuala Lumpur airport has a high risk of wildlife smuggling, he said, stressing on the need to eradicate this activity. This comes after a delegation of officials from CBI, Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB) and DRI on February 24 met with their Malaysian counterparts in Kuala Lumpur as part of an Interpol-mediated meeting to discuss the global exotic species smuggling trade. At the meeting, Indian officials flagged up repeated instances of wildlife coming from Malaysia to India by air – intercepted at airports like Chennai, Tiruchy, Bengaluru, Mumbai, and recently even Port Blair and Visakhapatnam. A presentation on the cases booked by Customs and DRI was made at the meeting, sources said. Majority of the animals smuggled from Malaysia were primates (monkeys), the Indian delegation said. The delegation also pointed out gaps in security and enforcement at the airport departure (Kuala Lumpur). The involvement of Indian nationals in most cases, was flagged, while measures to detect wildlife in check-in baggage at the source airport were discussed, sources added. An important part of the discussion also revolved around the repatriation of animals rescued by officials. India’s policy is to re-export them to the country from where they came from. However, Malaysian officials highlighted that many of the smuggled wildlife were not native to their country which posed challenges to allow their entry to their country. This was also a strong indication that Malaysia and Thailand, the other alleged place for such smuggling activities, have emerged as a transit point for the global wildlife trade, official sources said. https://www.newindianexpress.com/states/tamil-nadu/2025/Mar/16/malaysia-takes-action-against-wildlife-smuggling-after-indian-officials-raise-concerns