The proximity of a protected area home to the largest reserve of Red Sanders (Pterocarpus santalinus) to the pilgrim town of Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh makes its smuggling easy, official sources have told Down To Earth (DTE).
The valuable tree species is endemic to three districts (Chittoor, Nellore and YSR Kadapa) of southern Andhra Pradesh. Its largest reserve is found in Seshachalam Biosphere Reserve, a protected area and part of the Eastern Ghats landscape, occupying 4,755 sq km area.
Seshachalam is spread over Chittoor and YSR Kadapa districts and lies close to Tirupati (the temple is about 35 km from the Seshachalam Hills).
“As it is a pilgrimage area, vehicles are often not properly checked due to traffic rush. The smugglers take advantage of this situation. The timber is mainly exported outside India through the sea route,” a source, who works on elephant management in the Kaundinya Wildlife Sanctuary in southern Andhra Pradesh, told DTE.
Red Sanders takes 25-40 years to reach maturity being a slow-growing species. Protected under the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972, it is smuggled internationally mainly to China and other Asian countries.
Check posts are only available at vulnerable locations and there are many entry points into the forest.
Raids keep happening to seize the illegal timber from time to time. On January 9, 2026, the Andhra Pradesh forest department had received a tip-off and seized 75 Red Sanders logs. These were later seized and sent to the Red Sanders godown in Tirupati which stores them, said Nayeem Ali, a forest range officer posted in the Kadapa forest division of the same district. “The police and the forest departments had formed a taskforce way back in 2014. After two forest officials were killed by the smugglers, arms were issued to the forest department staff for safety,” the official added.
Earlier, a local tribe, known as the Yanadi, was mostly involved in the smuggling racket. But now most smugglers come from Tamil Nadu and enter Andhra Pradesh through the border. According to the source, the smugglers sometimes dress up as daily labourers or even as pilgrims in collusion with locals. This is why it is difficult to detect them easily. As the traffic is heavy on this route bordering Tamil Nadu to the south, there are times when they escape detection.
Seshachalam lies in southern Andhra Pradesh, in the Rayalseema region, which borders Tamil Nadu. A forest officer from Tirupati, who did not wish to be named, pointed out that the smugglers come in large numbers after tip-offs by locals and camp inside the forest for days.
“The Red Sanders wood is a bit brittle when compared to other timber such as teak, but it is in high demand outside India. Initially, smugglers enter the forest and fell the trees, and then another team comes for the transportation of the timber. It is an organised racket and sometimes several trees are cut down within an hour,” he said.
India is among the top 10 forest-rich nations of the world in terms of area and is a mega diverse country. But though forests act as carbon sink and halt climate change, deforestation is occurring at an alarming rate. One of the primary causes is illegal logging of timber and valuable species like Red Sanders regulated under CITES are targeted.
The Red Sanders area inside Seshachalam extends from central Andhra Pradesh to the Kaundinya Wildlife Sanctuary in the south known for Asian elephants. The central part of the state has deciduous forest cover, and the species is a tropical dry deciduous tree. Cross firings often happen when forest officials try to intercept the timber mafia.
Across India, illegal trade in timber happens through the mafia. Some of these trade networks flourished during the Covid-19 pandemic period due to the lack of proper surveillance as a result of lockdowns. The shortage of forest staff to keep tabs on criminal activity is also another reason.
Sometimes, there is inter-state collaboration to take on smugglers. In 2022, the Sendhwa forest division in Madhya Pradesh collaborated with adjoining Maharashtra to seize wood cutter machines, logs and illegal furniture. Though Sendhwa lacks good forest cover due to high encroachments, it had become a transit hub of illegal timber supplied across the border.
In both the cases of Sendhwa in central India as well as Seshachalam in the south, the inter-state border helps the illegal timber network flourish. In the case of Sendhwa, the illegal teak timber is mainly supplied via motorcycles which avoid main roads and travel through forested routes to evade arrests. But in the case of Red Sanders, the smugglers carry headloads, dump the timber inside forests or even under water for a day or two and take longer routes to avoid check posts.
“There are different routes and the pilgrimage route of Tirupati is preferred as it is close to the forest. Small vehicles are mainly used for transfers in lots to major ports. The hilly region also lends an advantage to smugglers. There is a lapse in checking, and the timber is sometimes well concealed inside milk containers,” the source mentioned above said.
Illegal timber logging gives rise to deforestation and conflicts, especially in times of a changing climate when carbon sequestration is being talked about across platforms as a mitigation measure.
This is mainly true of Indonesia, which has one of the highest deforestation rates in the world. According to reports, just under half of the country’s original forest cover now remains. Although estimates vary widely, conservative studies suggest more than a million hectares (2.4 million acres) of Indonesian rainforest is cleared and lost each year, with about 70 per cent occurring in forests on mineral soils and 30 per cent on carbon-rich peatland forests.
“Timber is to be considered as produced legally if done in respect of the laws and regulations of the producer country. If, however, a logging permit had been granted by the country’s relevant administration for an area that had been grabbed from traditional or customary landowners, even if in accordance with the country’s constitution, it is legal according to the country’s law, but unethical, since the granting was done in violation of the indigenous peoples’ customary and human rights. Hence, the characterisation of “legality” does not extend to the rights of the rightful owners of the land where the timber has been sourced from,” said Reiner Tegtmeyer, based in the United Kingdom. Tegtmeyer has worked for international non-profit Global Witness for many years and conducted investigations into forestry conflicts.
When it comes to India, since 1980, the country has diverted 1.5 million hectares of forest land for development activities, and a majority of this loss occurred since 2000, says Global Forest Watch, an open-source web application for monitoring the world’s forests. India’s high domestic demand for wood often drives the illegal timber market. It is also one of the world’s largest importers of timber. A durable timber like teak is in heavy demand in Delhi, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand. At the time when multiple raids happened in Sendhwa, the accumulated logs had already been dumped there.
The harvesting and felling of Red Sanders are not permitted inside the reserve forest area. Outside the reserve forest, there are plantations regulated by the forest department for legal trade. The sale of seized woods is permitted under CITES under specific and controlled exports.
Last year, the National Biodiversity Authority sanctioned Rs 82 lakh to the Andhra Pradesh State Biodiversity Board for the conservation of Red Sanders. The initiative is aimed at raising 100,000 saplings, which will be supplied to farmers.