Guwahati: Myanmar has emerged as the primary route for sneaking out rhino horns of rhinos from Assam while Vietnam has become a thriving market for illegal trade of rhino horns. according to a report submitted to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
The report has been submitted by the IUCN Species Survival Commission (IUCN SSC) African and Asian Rhino Specialist Groups and TRAFFIC.
Cross-border illegal trade into Myanmar has become the primary route for Assam’s rhino horns, according to investigation by Asian Rhino Specialist Group (AsRSG) members.
TRAFFIC’s seizure data supports this view with China making three horn seizures in Yunnan province in 2010-2011 that involved cross-border trade from Myanmar’s Kachin State. These seizures were believed to represent greater one-horned rhino. In 2015, four rhino horns were also seized in the Muse Township,
Shan State on the Myanmar border with China, the suspected end-use destination, and in Manipur, India, another rhino horn was seized the same year at the Khudenthabi check point on Myanmar border. Rhino horns have also been observed for sale in Mong La, another border enclave in Myanmar’s Shan State that functions as a notorious ‘backdoor’ wildlife trafficking hub to China.
Rhino horn as a medical ingredient was banned in China for more than two decades. In 1993, the pharmaceutical standard permitting rhino horn usage as a traditional medicinal ingredient was abolished. Unlike China, much more visible and robust markets for rhino horn trade have emerged in Viet Nam.
Kaziranga National Park in Assam conserves the bulk (82.5%) of India’s one-horned rhino population, with numbers continuing to increase at a slow rate since 2012 (+1.6% per year ) to an estimated 2,401 in 2015.
Earlier, report indicated that most rhino horns from Assam moved first to Nepal then on to China, with only about one-tenth of the traffic crossing the Indo-Myanmar border.
However, trade patterns have since changed. The spurt in rhino poaching in Assam from 2013 has resulted in at least 24 rhino horn seizures in India, with only two cases suggesting onward export to Nepal.
Previously, in 2010-2011, three rhino horn seizures occurred in Nepal, including a case that involved two Chinese nationals (TRAFFIC RHS database).
Since then, Nepalese law enforcement efforts have become more stringent, with a joint operation of Nepalese army and special police in October 2013 dismantling a rhino poaching network and arresting a major Kathmandu-based trader who allegedly ran a cross-border smuggling enterprise from Nepal to Tibet which killed 12 rhinos over six years.
