IWN Daily Digest — Friday, 25 September 2026
Twenty-seven international wildlife organisations have written to Vantara demanding that its year-long pause on importing wild animals become permanent, arriving weeks before the Gujarat megazoo’s response to a CITES verification mission is taken up in Geneva.
As reported by Down To Earth:
“More than two dozen wildlife conservation non-profits have joined to urge Vantara, the private megazoo funded by Reliance Industries, to end wild animal imports permanently. In an open letter to the Jamnagar, Gujarat-based facility, the non-profits have also demanded that Vantara take strict measures to ensure measures on all matters related to acquisition of animals.”
The letter, dated 22 September, was released by the Germany-based Pro Wildlife on behalf of the 27 signatories, among them the Jane Goodall Institute Global, the Animal Welfare Institute and several Africa-based groups. It is addressed to Amit Aggarwal, Vantara’s president of regulatory affairs, at the company’s campus in Jamnagar.
Vantara, funded by Reliance Industries, has imported roughly 60,000 live animals across 2,000 species in four years, among them Tapanuli orangutans, Spix’s macaws, Galápagos iguanas and shoebills. It announced its 12-month voluntary moratorium in August, in the wake of intense CITES scrutiny that found concerns about the volume of imports of strictly protected species and possible violations of international trade rules.
The signatories want that pause made indefinite, with limited exceptions for verified emergencies. Their letter also calls for an end to commercial incentives tied to acquisitions, a firm non-breeding policy, an independently reviewed public inventory of every animal on site, and support for conservation work in the countries the animals came from. IWN reported earlier this month that Vantara had already handed its import decisions to a five-person governing council with no seat for anyone who works there.
The letter lands ahead of a CITES Standing Committee meeting in Geneva on 2–6 November, where the Indian government’s response to the CITES Secretariat’s own verification mission, carried out in September 2025, will be considered.
Prey Problem
India and Cambodia have pushed back a plan to reintroduce Bengal tigers into Cambodia by three years, after a review found too little prey in the proposed release site to support a viable population.
As reported by Mongabay India:
“India and Cambodia have postponed a plan to reintroduce Bengal tigers into Cambodia, moving the target from 2025 to 2028 after a review found that the available prey base in the proposed release landscape remains too low to support a viable tiger population. International consultant to Cambodia’s Ministry of Environment (MoE) for tiger reintroduction Jimmy Borah of Aaranyak informs that prey shortage has always been a talking point in this project.”
The proposed site is Kravanh National Park in the Cardamom Mountains of southwestern Cambodia, a 926,123-hectare landscape considered among the country’s most intact forest. Cambodia’s last confirmed wild tiger was photographed in 2007, and the tiger was formally declared extinct there in 2016.
A 2020 feasibility study found less than a 25 per cent probability that the landscape could support 25 adult tigers, against an 80 per cent probability it could sustain five. Carnivore biologist K. Ullas Karanth has said prey availability ultimately determines whether tigers can survive in a landscape.
Cambodia plans to spend the years before 2028 on increased patrolling, snare-clearing and rebuilding the prey base inside the park.
Sources: Down To Earth · Mongabay India
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