IWN Report — Friday, 18 September 2026
Eight South Asian governments adopted a joint declaration in Kathmandu last week committing to share intelligence and trace the money behind wildlife trafficking networks, agreeing to treat the trade as organised crime just days after Indian customs officers wrapped up a ten-day sweep that pulled leopard pelts, pangolin scales and tiger bone out of five states.
The declaration came out of the first General Assembly of the South Asia Wildlife Enforcement Network (SAWEN), held in Kathmandu on 10 and 11 September. Delegates from India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Maldives signed what is being called the Kathmandu Declaration, which frames wildlife crime as transnational organised crime rather than a series of isolated poaching cases. According to India’s government-run News on Air service, the declaration commits members to intelligence-led investigations, joint financial inquiries, anti-money-laundering measures and asset recovery aimed at the networks behind the trade. “Wildlife crime threatens the region’s biodiversity and natural heritage, as well as the rule of law, security and sustainable development,” the declaration states.
The Seizures
Officers of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), the investigative arm of India’s finance ministry, intercepted a leopard pelt in Jeypore, in Odisha’s Koraput district, on 7 September, the same day a separate team found 180 live Indian star tortoises packed into six cloth bags in Bengaluru, Karnataka. Around the same time, on 5 and 6 September, officers working alongside the Forest Department in Madhya Pradesh’s Sidhi district recovered a leopard skin.
Assam accounted for two of the six operations: twelve live tokay geckos turned up in Keokhali on 5 September, and an operation dated back to 28 August in Karbi Anglong district yielded close to nine kilograms of pangolin scales along with half a kilogram of tiger bone, skull and teeth still attached. Meghalaya’s Ri-Bhoi district produced the single largest pangolin haul, at nearly 15 kilograms of dried scales, and the six operations led to thirteen arrests in total, according to the Press Information Bureau.
All eight pangolin species are listed under Appendix I of CITES, the international treaty regulating wildlife trade, and the Indian pangolin specifically carries Schedule I protection under India’s Wildlife (Protection) Act — the law’s highest protection category. The Press Information Bureau’s account of the operations called the mix of live animals, skins and processed parts evidence of “the varied forms in which wildlife is trafficked,” and noted that the DRI worked with state forest departments and the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau throughout.
The Kathmandu Declaration commits all eight countries to build shared financial-investigation and asset-recovery capacity aimed at the networks organising the trade, not just the individuals caught carrying it across borders.
Sources: Press Information Bureau · News on Air (All India Radio)