On 8 September 2026, five juvenile orangutans were found in the Bhograi area of Odisha’s Balasore district. There is an obvious problem with that picture: orangutans do not occur naturally in India.

The animals were rescued by the Forest Department. The Odisha Police Special Task Force (STF) and the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB) have since launched a joint probe into how they reached the Bichitrapur forest area, who transported them and whether an organised trafficking network was involved. State Forest and Environment Minister Ganesh Ram Singhkhuntia has said that an international wildlife-smuggling operation is among the possibilities being investigated.

At present, however, that remains a suspicion. The investigation has not established where the animals came from, how they entered India or whether their journey involved sea, air, road or rail transport.

That uncertainty is important for the shipping industry. There is no basis at present for connecting these particular orangutans with a ship or container. But the case illustrates the larger transport problem behind international wildlife trafficking: protected animals and wildlife products cannot cross countries and continents without somebody arranging their movement.

Five Animals Far Outside Their Natural Range

Orangutans are native to Southeast Asia. The surviving species occur in Indonesia and Malaysia, principally on Borneo and Sumatra. None is native to India.

Reports from Odisha indicate that the five rescued animals are juveniles. Authorities are now trying to establish their origin and the circumstances in which they appeared in the forest.

Orangutans are listed in Appendix I of CITES – the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. Appendix I applies the Convention’s strictest international trade controls to species threatened with extinction. Commercial international trade in Appendix I species is prohibited outright. Non-commercial movement remains possible in limited circumstances, but only under stringent import and export permit requirements and other conditions set out in the Convention.

If the Odisha investigation establishes that the animals were moved illegally across an international border, the case will therefore involve considerably more than the abandonment of exotic animals in an Indian forest. It will raise the question of how they were transported.

Wildlife Trafficking is Also a Transport Problem

Illegal wildlife trade covers much more than live animals. Traffickers move ivory, pangolin scales, reptiles, birds, timber, plants, skins, marine species and wildlife-derived products. Some consignments are small enough to be concealed in personal baggage. Others involve commercial quantities hidden within legitimate cargo.

International shipping is therefore vulnerable to exploitation in much the same way that other transport systems are vulnerable to drug smuggling, counterfeit goods, stolen vehicles and other illicit trades.

The International Maritime Organization has recognised this problem explicitly. In April 2024 the IMO Facilitation Committee adopted Resolution FAL.17(48), Revised Guidelines for the Prevention and Suppression of the Smuggling of Wildlife on Ships Engaged in International Maritime Traffic. The resolution set 1 May 2024 as the date by which Contracting Governments were strongly urged to have the revised Guidelines in effect.

It also asked Governments and international organisations to circulate them widely and, in particular, to bring them to the attention of shipping lines, maritime transport operators, seafarers, shippers, freight forwarders, consolidators and other maritime stakeholders. The Guidelines are therefore not directed only at customs officers. They recognise that preventing wildlife smuggling requires involvement from both competent authorities and companies operating within the maritime supply chain.

How Wildlife Can Be Concealed at Sea

FAL.17(48) considers a number of methods by which wildlife may be smuggled through maritime transport. These include container cargo, passenger ships, ferries, ro-ro vessels, bulk cargo and concealment involving crew members.

Containerised cargo presents an obvious difficulty. The shipping line generally receives a booking and a cargo declaration from the shipper. It does not supervise the packing of every container and cannot open millions of containers simply to check whether the declaration is correct. A container declared as containing an ordinary commodity may therefore contain something else as well.

The practical answer is risk assessment rather than universal physical inspection. This is reflected throughout the IMO Guidelines.

The Red Flags in FAL.17(48)

The IMO resolution includes a useful annex listing indicators of possible illegal wildlife trade. Among them are:

• A commodity that appears inconsistent with the stated country of origin or destination;
• Discrepancies between the declared cargo and its weight or appearance;
• Dubious or vague cargo descriptions;
• Cargo value that does not correspond with its description or quantity;
• Questionable paperwork;
• Consignments divided across several shipments;
• A shipping route that is abnormal for the commodity and destination;
• A route changed after the ship has sailed;
• Use of a switch bill of lading;
• Failure to disclose the true shipper or consignee;
• An inexperienced shipper unwilling to provide information about its business or the intended use of the product; and
• Unusual last-minute arrangements or payment practices.

No single indicator proves that wildlife trafficking is taking place. A legitimate shipment can have an unusual routing. Documents can contain innocent errors. Cargo weights can change for lawful reasons. Investigators build a case from the pattern across several indicators – commodity, route, shipper, consignee, documentation and weight – taken together, not from any one of them in isolation.

This approach will be familiar to shipping lines already screening bookings for undeclared dangerous goods, sanctions exposure and other cargo risks.

The Shipping Industry is Developing Its Own Response

The World Shipping Council (WSC), whose members include many of the world’s major container shipping lines, states that it and its member companies are strongly opposed to illegal wildlife trafficking.

Its programme presently focuses on four areas: better screening, tracking and reporting; staff training; international collaboration; and work towards a credible maritime certification programme for companies combating illegal wildlife trafficking.

WSC is also working with the National Cargo Bureau and WWF to add wildlife-trafficking screening to the WSC Cargo Safety Program. The Cargo Safety Program uses a shared digital screening system to examine large numbers of container bookings for keywords, trade patterns and other risk indicators. WSC says that the proposed wildlife component is intended to identify potentially misdeclared or undeclared wildlife products and complement the screening already carried out by individual carriers.

WSC describes the wildlife-screening capability as still being incorporated into the Cargo Safety Program, with regulatory issues yet to be resolved before it goes live. It does not yet screen every booking against an operational global wildlife database.

There is also Operation COASTLINE, under which WSC, its member companies and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime are working together on suspicious-shipment identification, sharing of risk indicators and early reporting of possible wildlife-trafficking cases.

These developments point towards a more data-driven approach to illicit cargo. The carrier may not see what is physically inside a sealed container, but it can see a great deal of information about the transaction surrounding it.

What CITES Does – and Does Not Do

CITES is central to international wildlife trade, but its function needs to be understood correctly. It is a trade-control convention.

Depending on the species and the circumstances, international movement may require export permits, import permits, re-export certificates or other CITES documentation. A CITES-listed species can move legally, provided that documentation is in place and matches the movement being made.

For a carrier or freight forwarder, the relevant question is whether the particular international movement is lawful and whether the documentation accompanying it is genuine and appropriate for that species and that movement.

Answering that can require consideration of the species, CITES Appendix, source, purpose of movement, origin, destination and national restrictions, in addition to the CITES requirements themselves. FAL.17(48) accordingly includes CITES documents within the material that authorities and maritime operators should understand when considering possible wildlife trafficking.

A Possible New UN Criminal-Law Instrument

A separate development is now taking place within the United Nations system. It has sometimes been described in public discussion as a proposed ‘UN Convention on Wildlife Trafficking’ – a description that overstates where the process actually stands.

There is no new UN wildlife-trafficking convention awaiting adoption. The current process concerns the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC).

At its twelfth session, the Conference of the Parties to UNTOC established an open-ended intergovernmental expert process to examine crimes that affect the environment falling within the scope of the Convention. The group was asked to identify gaps in the international legal framework and consider possible responses, including the possibility, feasibility and merits of an additional protocol to UNTOC.

The second expert-group meeting took place in Vienna from 24 to 26 February 2026. Importantly, the discussions did not produce formal consensus on draft recommendations. Different States continue to hold different views on whether a new protocol is required and what its scope should be. Some favour a dedicated international instrument; others consider that greater use and implementation of existing conventions may be the better approach.

The issue is expected to come before the thirteenth session of the Conference of the Parties to UNTOC in October 2026. That meeting could become an important stage in deciding whether States wish to proceed towards negotiations on an additional protocol, but that decision has not yet been made.

CITES, UNTOC and IMO Have Different Functions

CITES regulates international trade in protected wildlife. UNTOC provides legal tools for cooperation against transnational organised crime.

A future additional UNTOC protocol, if States ultimately negotiate and adopt one, could provide a more specific criminal-law framework for wildlife trafficking or the wider category of crimes affecting the environment.

IMO Resolution FAL.17(48) deals with the maritime transport side: prevention, detection, reporting, cooperation and the vulnerabilities through which wildlife can be smuggled aboard ships.

Carrier and industry systems then operate at the practical level – booking information, risk screening, customer due diligence, escalation and cooperation with competent authorities.

What Does This Mean for a Shipping Line?

A shipping company cannot determine the legality of every wildlife specimen moving in international trade, and has no mandate to replace Customs, wildlife authorities, CITES Management Authorities or law-enforcement agencies. Its useful role is narrower: shipping companies hold booking and transaction information that those agencies can use.

At the booking stage a carrier commonly knows the declared cargo, shipper, consignee, container, origin, destination, routing and transshipment ports. It may also know whether a booking has been changed repeatedly, whether the proposed route is unusual and whether similar customers or shipments have previously caused concern.

The role of the carrier is therefore principally one of risk recognition and escalation. Where a shipment produces credible red flags, the appropriate response may include seeking additional information, subjecting the booking to further internal review and, where warranted, referring the matter to the competent authorities.

This is the model FAL.17(48) itself sets out for companies: risk recognition and escalation, not turning shipping-line personnel into wildlife investigators.

And What About the Five Orangutans?

For the moment, they remain part of an investigation in Odisha. The joint STF-WCCB probe has to establish where they came from, who handled them and how they reached Balasore.

They may ultimately have travelled by road, air, rail or sea, or through a combination of transport modes. Until evidence establishes the route, attributing their arrival to any particular part of the transport industry would be speculation.

What the case does demonstrate is the logistical reality behind wildlife trafficking. An orangutan cannot be electronically transmitted from one country to another. Neither can ivory, pangolin scales, live reptiles or illegally harvested timber. If wildlife crime crosses borders, at some stage it enters a transport chain.

Tracing the shipper, intermediary, documentation, payment and movement behind a consignment is what exposes the network responsible for it – finding the animal or product itself is only the starting point.

The five orangutans found in Odisha have brought unusual public attention to that problem. IMO, UN agencies and the container shipping industry have been working on the same problem for several years: how to prevent legitimate international transport networks from becoming an unnoticed part of the wildlife-trafficking chain.

The outcome of the Odisha investigation may tell us whether maritime transport had anything to do with this particular case. The wider maritime issue already exists, irrespective of that answer.