For many years, Nepal has been widely regarded as a conservation success.
But now it is emerging as an international transit point for illegal wildlife goods, particularly those being moved between India and China.
Sandwiched between the two Asian giants, Nepal has devoted nearly 20% of its land to national parks and protected areas that have conserved endangered animal and plant species.
But outside such preserved areas, highways and mountain trails are increasingly becoming transit routes for wildlife traffickers, conservationists and officials say
The amount of wildlife goods seized in the recent past really tells us that Nepal is indeed a transit point,” says Prasanna Yonjan of Wildlife Conservation Nepal, an organisation that has helped authorities catch many traffickers and poachers.
“We know Nepal is a conduit for the international market, particularly the Orient. Most of the goods seized here are not products from Nepal but from down south, particularly India, Bangladesh and perhaps also from Bhutan.”
The superintendent of police, Devendra Subedi, who heads the crime branch in the capital, Kathmandu, says illegal wildlife trafficking has become a part of organised crime.
“There are several layers involved, and the people in it are found to be [involved] in other crimes like drug trafficking as well,” he explains.
So much so that even the country’s forest minister Matrika Prasad Yadav is well aware of the happenings. A former Maoist rebel leader, he even went on to say that several government agencies are involved in the trafficking network.
“One example is the smuggling of red sandalwood that comes in from India and is smuggled out to China,” he said in an interview for the BBC’s One Planet programme.
“I have documentary proof that even my own ministry, before I took over, allowed such smuggling by calling the red sandalwood ‘common wood’.
“Later when my ministry, and the finance and home ministries, opened checkpoints on highways, my staff were harrassed and threatened by the people of the other two ministries.
“When tonnes and tonnes of red sandalwood can be smuggled in and out, you can imagine what could be happening with things much smaller in size.”
But others point out that, as a former Maoist rebel, the minister has a track record of tough talk about other political parties.