Chennai: fauna
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Illegal animal trade
As in 2023
Komal Gautham, Oct 8, 2023: The Times of India
Smuggled exotic animals worth crores are sold in Chennai markets every year It’s 12.01am on a November night in 2022. Passengers of Thai Airways Flight TG 0337 from Bangkok await their luggage at the Chennai international airport. A stinking bag draws the attention of customs officials, who open it and find four sedated marmoset monkeys inside. Thousands of such exotic animals reach Indian shores to feed the clandestine markets in Chennai’s Red Hills, Pallavaram, Broadway and Kolathur.
Although the trade in such species is illegal, once the animals are in the market the law is virtually toothless.While there are no official records of transactions, TOI’s calculations based on inputs from traders and officials show Chennai’s exotic pet trade could be worth Rs 1,000 crore. Well connected to the Far East, the southern metropolis has emerged as a hub of this grey market.
Sold right under law’s nose
At the Pallavaram Friday market, barely a couple of kilometres from Chennai airport, exotic animals worth more than Rs 10 lakh are sold in a day. At Broadway, on Sundays alone, wildlife worth at least Rs 10 lakh is sold. And six breeding farms in Chennai stock exotic wildlife worth at least Rs 100 crore each.
A pair of macaws fetches up to Rs 15 lakh, and a pair of cockatoos up to Rs 5 lakh in the markets that function openly at Red Hills, Kolathur, Pallavaram and Broadway. The list goes on. You can buy a De Brazza’s monkey for Rs 8 lakh to Rs 10 lakh, a marmoset for Rs 4 lakh to Rs 10 lakh, a tamarin (squirrel-sized monkey) for Rs 2 lakh to Rs 6 lakh, an iguana for Rs 1 lakh and a spectacled caiman for Rs 2 lakh.
Srinivas Reddy, wildlife warden of Tamil Nadu, says the Wildlife Protection Act has been amended, but officials like him are awaiting guidelines. Without new guidelines, the maximum legal action is a fine of Rs 50 under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, he says.
Mules easy to find in SE Asia
Customs officials say it’s the stench of animal urine that alerts them every time to exotic wildlife in the luggage of passengers from Thailand, Malaysia and Sri Lanka. Shanthi Pillai, inspector with the state Wildlife Crime Control Bureau, says the smuggling has grown fast over the years. “When I joined the department in 2013, the first call I got was about aquarium fishes. The next was about six snakes. Now the frequency of calls and the number of species have gone up,” she says. Recently, she seized 300 reptiles, including 200 snakes, from a passenger from Bangkok.
It all begins with the ‘wildlife carriers’ who are much like drug mules. Many of them are residents of Thailand, Malaysia and Sri Lanka. They carry the animals from Bangkok, where they are bred after being sourced from across the world. Some are labourers from southern Tamil Nadu districts in need of quick money. In one consign - ment caught in October 2022, 162 ball pythons, 198 albino red-eared slider turtles, 7 monitor lizards and 53 corn snakes were seized. In August the same year, six monkeys and over 150 iguanas were seized. “Once, we caught a young engineer who worked as an e-commerce company operator. They get Rs 10,000 plus ticket and expenses,” says Pillai.
They’re breeding animals too
But what’s more worrying is the large-scale breeding of all kinds of wildlife without checks. This increases the risk of zoonotic diseases spreading and of local fauna being overrun by exotic species. “Many are now doing genetic breeding, creating their own new species without understanding the ecological risks,” says E Prashant, Chennai’s Wildlife Warden.
In Chennai, close to two dozen breeding farms function like factories, with state-of-the-art infrastructure, on East Coast Road and at Tambaram and Koyambedu. They churn out lakhs of exotic pets every year. Tier-2 cities in the state are not far behind, with their own breeding farms for sugar gliders, meerkats, all types of monkeys, birds, and reptiles, including crocodiles from North America and Brazil. Activists say the law should ensure these animals are not let into the wild. There must also be more stringent punishment for those caught in illegal possession of exotic wildlife