The following article appeared in Wired magazine, in print and online on October 10, 2020. It was written by Sabrina Weiss and the photos are by Julien Faure. The original article can be found here
Pangolin scales are a prized ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine – and that has put the animal firmly on the endangered list. Isoscape tracking could help stop their slaughter at the source
Pangolins are thought to have passed the coronavirus to humans, after they first caught it from horseshoe bats
Before researchers suggested pangolins may be a missing link in the transmission of coronavirus from bats to humans, most people had never even heard of them. Yet these scaly, ant-eating mammals are smuggled in huge numbers to Asia and are in danger of extinction.
There are eight species of pangolin, split evenly between Africa and Asia, and each one of them is barred from international trade. So identifying confiscated scales and body parts as “pangolin” can be enough to prosecute a criminal case. But discerning different species and tracing their geographic origins is more tricky. This is where wildlife forensics comes in, a rapidly developing field that uses scientific procedures to investigate crimes against wildlife. To help crack down on intricate trafficking routes and poaching hotspots, scientists and laboratory technicians are figuring out ways to analyse the DNA and dietary history of seized animals and their products.
Pangolin scales are a booming business in Asia thanks to their status as an ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine, while the animal’s meat is considered a delicacy Julien Faure / INSTITUTE
Most consumers come from mainland China and Vietnam, where pangolin meat is a prized delicacy and keratin scales are a popular ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine, touted as a cure for anything from asthma to cancer, and as an aid to help mothers with lactation. Pangolins have recently been in the spotlight for their potential role in the Covid-19 pandemic. Sars-Cov-2, the virus that causes the novel disease, is suspected to have originated in horseshoe bats and possibly leaped to humans via pangolins.
On the 7th of August 2020, Sheree Bega from the Saturday Star wrote this story from information supplied by the African Pangolin Working Group. There has been a poaching spike out there with many pangolins being retrieved – this is about one of the busiest weeks we had in July.
In just over a week, Ray Jansen and his team have recovered four trafficked pangolins – three of them pregnant – in sting operations from the illicit trade in various parts of South Africa.
In total, 11 people were arrested by a team of dedicated and specialised law enforcement officers.The operations are a sign, says Jansen, of the African Pangolin Working Group, that pangolin poaching has resumed under Level 3 lockdown restrictions.
“It’s just gone mad. The lockdown at the end of March shut all borders, people’s movements and poachers couldn’t move animals over the border from Zimbabwe or wherever. The risk being associated with moving a poached protected species was a hell of a lot higher with all the road blocks and army blocks.
“So it literally collapsed up and when we moved from Level 4 to Level 3, it just went bang and opened the trade all over again. We’ve seen an increase in normal poaching as people have gotten laid off, companies close and work opportunities crash. Rural communities are really in huge trouble and local poaching of porcupines and antelope have skyrocketed as people don’t have money to feed their families.”
Pangolins are the most heavily trafficked mammal on the planet and rank among the most trafficked wildlife species on the continent.
The demand largely for their keratinous scales, used in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), and for their meat in south-east Asia has created a lucrative illicit market run by transnational criminal syndicates.
In SA, around 16 pangolins have been intercepted in the illicit trade this year. While the international trade has crashed under Covid-19 lockdowns, Jansen says he expects a “huge increase again as ports start opening and the economies starts to open.
“I have good intelligence that in the DRC, Vietnam and Nigeria, they’re stockpiling scales and I think once the ports open we’re going to see a huge movement of the illegal wildlife trade products again.”
So far this year, around 10 tons of scales have been intercepted in Africa – last year this time it was around 70 tons. “I don’t think the trade stopped, I do think it’s being stockpiled.”
Last year, authorities intercepted more than 97 tons of scales from Africa representing over 150 000 animals. But the real poaching onslaught is far higher – only 10% of the illicit trade is intercepted, says Jansen.
A pangolin retrieved from the illegal trade last week in a sting operation on the N4. 7 August 2020.
In June, the Chinese government outlawed pangolin scales as a raw ingredient in TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine). However, the Environmental Investigation Agency found pangolin scales are still listed as an ingredient in patent medicine formulae found in the official reference book, meaning they can still be legally traded and used.
“The ban is the best news for pangolins I’ve heard in the past 10 years I’ve been working on this order. It’s a massive and monumental step forward for the conservation of a multitude of endangered species including pangolins.
“The loophole is a huge problem because everyone is just going to go and patent their products. But the large majority of commercially available remedies in China are effectively banned, which is huge. I do think China will rule to outlaw it completely and I look forward to that day.”
Jansen is optimistic this will “eventually trickle down to the guys on the ground doing the poaching, that it’s not lucrative anymore and it’s time to do other things.
“This lag period between banning it and removing it out of the trade and taking it from the financial reward, it may take up to a year,” he said.
Dear Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesu (Director General of the World Health Organisation) and
Ms Inger Andersen (Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program),
STATEMENT ON NOVEL CORONOVIRUS (COVID-19) PANDEMIC AND A RESPONSE TO THE CALL ON THE TOTAL BAN ON GLOBAL “WET MARKETS”
Preamble
Humanity is under siege from a global viral pandemic. We, as a global community, have been through a number of these, many of which have changed the course of history and life as we know it. The current one, commonly referred to as COVID-19, will undoubtedly do the same. Its origin is mainland China – a country not new to catastrophic viral pandemics, recorded as early as 5000 years ago in “Hamin Mangha” and at the same time in “Miaozigou”, both in north-eastern China. Of more recent historical occurrence was the great flu pandemic of 1889, the Spanish Flu of 1918, the Asian Flu of 1957 (also originating from China), and more recently the H1N1 swine flu of 2009 and the ongoing Ebola epidemic. All seem to have a common thread – their origin was very likely a zoonotic infection where the virus was transferred, through a mutation event, from an animal to a human. COVID-19 was a similar event and a similar viral strain had occurred as SARS-CoV in 2002/3 in Guangdong Province, China and SARS MERS in 2012 in the Middle East. Like COVID-19, both were SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) viruses, both seemed to have originated from a common ‘natural’ host and both were unleashed through human utilisation of wild animals for consumption. It is now time that humanity ensure systems and processes are in place to protect both human populations as well as the world’s free-living wild animals and the natural spaces and ecosystems they occupy to benefit all living entities that share this planet.
Currently, there are two dominant schools of thought – one is to have a complete ban on global “wet” markets; the other to impose intense regulation measures within these markets on the animals traded so as not to be to the detriment of human communities and, to a lesser extent, wild animal populations. The first is unrealistic and the second would be almost impossible to regulate. In this open letter, we provide a simplistic summary of the virus, its transmission to humans, our view on a global ban of wet markets and a suggested compromise to both.
The origin and source of COVID-19
SARS or Coronaviruses are a diverse family of viruses with their most likely origin in a natural host species, often bats. Their name originates from the spiky projections on their outer surface that take the shape of a “crown”. Within the natural host, the virus is benign and cannot infect humans. However, the virus has an uncanny ability to mutate and, once it does, the molecular makeup of its binding surface changes and may be compatible with an alternative host that has come into close contact via the spread of blood or body fluid like excreta; or is a species that has preyed upon the natural host. These new (intermediate) hosts were an Asian civet species in the 2002/3 SARS outbreak in China, camels in the 2012 MERS outbreak in the Middle East and pangolins have been unproven accursed with this current SARS outbreak.
For the SARS virus to jump to an intermediate host in a wild natural environment is uncommon, although not impossible. For the SARS virus to be transmitted to an intermediate host via (forced) close contact is more likely and pretty much inevitable. These environments are created by humans in markets where animals are held in unsanitary conditions; welfare is minimal and manifold in species that are in close contact with one another, often slaughtered in what is termed a “wet” market environment. This is a cesspool of disease and is the epicentre of the vast majority of viral outbreaks that infect human populations and emanate from the direct, and often, inhumane utilisation of both wild and domestic animal species.
Transmission to humans
It is widely believed a SARS virus, carried by a species of Horseshoe bat, was passed on in a mutated form to an intermediate host in a wet market in Wuhan, central China, during 2019. The intermediate host species is unknown, however, an Asian species of pangolin was implicated. Either through indirect contact, direct contact of some sort or through consumption, this novel Coronavirus was transmitted to humans and COVID-19 spread like a wildfire across the globe hitching rides on human carriers primarily through rapid global air transport. It is abundantly clear that a future risk assessment strategy and a realistic action plan needs to be formulated urgently.
The total ban on wet markets OR the overregulation of these markets
In principle, inhibiting the spread of dangerous future zoonotic diseases is relatively simple – close down all wet markets. In reality, this is both not possible nor would it be sympathetic to the many millions of people around the world that rely on the utilisation of countless species of both plants and animals for their existence as a source of food and as an advantage in job creation amongst many other outcomes.
Both arguments have been clearly stated in open letters to you by well recognised animal welfare organisations and academics from various sources. Intense regulation in very remote rural communities, and associated wild food markets, in Africa and Asia (primarily) is also not practical nor realistic as the funding, manpower and social urgency does not exist and will not exist for a multitude of reasons. The cultural existence and long history of the utilisation of natural resources cannot be outlawed and set into law within societies that are many thousands of years old with strong cultural and traditional value systems. Many of these activities will simply continue unabated or even move underground and the welfare of animal species will likely deteriorate further and the likelihood of a disease outbreak will be even greater.
Proposed way forward to inhibit the spread of future zoonotic diseases
Zoonotic diseases such as SARS Coronoviruses, Ebola, AIDS, Swine Flu and a multitude of other viruses involve a very specific group of vertebrate terrestrial mammals being kept under conditions where their welfare is compromised and in close proximity to other wild and domestic animals that are being utilised by humans for consumption. This is the ideal climate for both host and intermediate host virus transmitting species.
Firstly, the consumption of predatory terrestrial and semi-terrestrial carnivores, insectivores, a small group of omnivores and a smaller group of frugivores are primarily responsible for a large percentage of these outbreaks or, at least, the initial origin and source of these outbreaks. These include but are not limited to the Felidae, the Canidae, the Manidae, bats, primates, civets, and others (to be identified by WHO appointed epidemiologists) where viral zoonotic epidemic risk is considered very high and likely.
Secondly, inhumane conditions relating to animal welfare, husbandry and close confinement leads to a compromised immune system and play a considerable role in both the origin and transmission of these highly contagious zoonotic viral diseases. Guidelines on humane animal welfare have been developed by a multitude of organisations and can be implimated with little additional cost or effort.
Implementation of regulations relating to both the above is realistic and achievable for the benefit of the welfare of humans and a multitude of vertebrate species that are often regarded as key species in terrestrial ecosystems. The identification of these species (representing animal orders) can be rolled out to communities via visual pamphlets, social media and general media. It is pertinent to mention that current laws relating to protected species within range states are generally and most often ignored. The process of publically identifying certain “groups of species” (Orders) is expected to be more acceptable than providing endless lists of protected species in countries such as Africa and Asia. Mechanisms of communication to even very remote regions have been proven to be very successful recently in a multitude of Asian and African countries with regards the further spread of COVID-19. Similar communication methods can be implemented in the prevention of the use of species identified as high-risk in the potential spread of zoonotic viruses.
These proposed regulations are achievable and will reduce the risk of further epidemiological pandemics considerably whilst ensuring the well-being of species in these markets as well as the humans that depend on these species for survival. This is by no means a definitive ‘recipe’ to the issue at hand but an initial realistic proposal to the benefit of all who are at risk.
Professor Ray Jansen Chairman of the African Pangolin Working Group On behalf of the African Pangolin Working Group
Environmental groups say a symbolic gesture would send a clear signal to the public that use of pangolin scales is no longer permitted. Alexis Kriel reports
A call on the Chinese government to burn its stockpile of pangolin scales is gathering momentum among international environmental groups which say it would be a symbolic gesture of intent in support of the recent removal of pangolins from Chinese pharmacopoeia.
On June 6 there was an official declaration by China’s State Forestry and Grassland Administration that it had elevated pangolins from a Class 2 animal to the level of a Class 1 animal, affording pangolins the highest protection nationally. This provides for a penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment for those caught hunting, killing, smuggling or trading pangolins – giving them the same protected status in China as giant pandas.
Three days later the 2020 edition of Chinese pharmacopoeia was officially published without pangolins or their derivatives listed as approved ingredients.
Pangolin meat is consumed as a delicacy throughout Asia, but it is the scales that account for 90% of the illegal trade. They are used in Chinese traditional medicine as cures for a variety of ailments that purport to clear blockages, disperse swelling, expel pus, alleviate difficulty with lactation and poor circulation.
“This announcement, effectively closing the legal sale of pangolin scales, shuts the last major loophole in pangolin protection efforts,” said Peter Knights, chief executive of WildAid, a United States-based environmental organisation.
Knights said he hoped the Chinese government would do something to raise awareness of the important change. Burning or crushing the scales – as has been done with ivory by other governments – would send a clear signal to the public that use of pangolin scales is no longer permitted, he said.
The African Pangolin Working Group initiated the call this week for a public burning of officially approved government stockpiles of pangolin scales that have been used legally for Chinese medicine and dispensed to some 700 state-certified hospitals.
Professor Ray Jansen, head of the group, said he has counted 60 commercially produced remedies in Chinese pharmacopoeia that use pangolin scales and are distributed through more than 200 pharmaceutical companies.
Investigations by Oxpeckers in 2019 showed there has been a dramatic increase in the quantity of pangolin scales trafficked from Africa to Asia over the past decade to feed this demand. Last year alone, a total of 97 tons of scales were confiscated en route from Africa to Asia – the equivalent of 150,000 illegally poached African pangolins, with a wholesale value of around $500-million before being processed for use and marked up for retail sale, Jansen said.
Jansen appealed for a worldwide burning of all stockpiles of pangolin scales held in official custody, mentioning at least five tons of scales in Nigeria that are currently under the guardianship of customs police. Nigeria is Africa’s key pangolin export country, according to this Oxpeckers exposé.
Secretary general of the China Biodiversity and Green Development Foundation, Jinfeng Zhou, said all officially approved government stockpiles of pangolin scales “must be burnt” to give China credibility. The NGO has been instrumental in persuading the government to upgrade pangolins and to remove them from traditional Chinese medicine.
Zhou said the general public had welcomed the changes but the business owners behind the lucrative trade are a hostile adversary and are in strong opposition to the new status quo. The foundation’s leadership has had to make use of security for protection after a recent arson attack on their offices.
At least 380kg of pangolin scales were seized in Cameroon this week, and two military men were arrested along with a third alleged trafficker in a crackdown on an African pangolin scales trafficking ring. Photo courtesy Eagle Network / Facebook
Burning stockpiles
The burning of stockpiles of ivory by the Kenyan government in 2016 was contentious. It followed a poaching surge in 2012 and 2013 that resulted in the loss of more elephants and rhinos than at any time in the previous two decades. More than 100 tonnes of ivory was stacked up in pyres in Nairobi National Park, representing the tusks of about 6,700 elephants.
Before setting the pyres alight in a ceremonial gesture of support, President Kenyatta sent a message to the world: “No one, and I repeat no one, has any business in trading in ivory, for this trade means death of our elephants and death of our natural heritage.”
This followed a new wildlife law that introduced a maximum penalty of life imprisonment for poaching. While critics disagreed with Kenya’s approach to destroying valuable ivory that could be sold to raise funds for conservation, supporters argued that if ivory has a monetary value it is a tradeable commodity open to abuse by traffickers.
For organisations like WildAid, the challenge going forward is to make consuming pangolins socially unacceptable, not just in China, but also across SouthEast Asia and in parts of Africa, where bushmeat consumption also poses the risk of zoonotic diseases as well as threatening wildlife populations.
“We believe that both the elevated protection of China’s pangolins and their removal from medicine will help to give the public a clear message that pangolin consumption is completely banned and those involved will face stiff penalties,” said Knights. “We hope this will lead to increased collaboration between Chinese customs and African authorities to crackdown on pangolin smuggling.
“The public burning of wildlife contraband has become a definitive declaration of intent on behalf of governments, and burning Chinese pangolin scale stockpiles will be the first of its kind.”
Dazzile Africa recently screened Eye of the Pangolin film on their website.
Afterwards, APWG’s Nicci Wright took part in a panel discussion with filmmaker Bruce Young, Paul Thomson of Save Pangolins, Rod Cassidy from Sangha Lodge, and Kate Wilson from Mulberry Mongoose.
Amongst other things they discussed the magic of looking a pangolin in the eye, the propulsion of pangolins into the spotlight because of covid-19, and other coronavirus related facts about pangolins.
They also discussed the importance of getting the younger generation to advocate for Pangolins – including a picture book suggestion.
There were quite a few questions asked that the panelist could not answer because pangolins are so elusive – how long do they live if not interferred with by people?, which country has the largest population of pangolins?, and do pangolins have twins?
It is a fascinating film and an interesting discussion – spend a few lockdown hours learning all about pangolins!
To watch the entire film and discussion click here
The following article was written by Sheree Bega and published in the Saturday Star
Professor Ray Jansen was sitting on his stoep last week Tuesday enjoying the sunset with his Labradors and drinking a cold beer when the call came through.
A senior police officer in Limpopo told Jansen, the founder of the non-profit African Pangolin Working Group (APWG), that a member of the public had been contacted by a man who intended to sell him two pangolins.
Would he take over the negotiations? Jansen, who has devoted over the last decade to conserving the elusive, enigmatic mammals, did not hesitate.
Pangolins, or scaly anteaters, are rarely glimpsed in the wild. Revered in traditional African culture, they’re viewed as “ghost animals” because of their secretive, solitary nature. They’re the most heavily poached mammal on the planet and rank among the most trafficked wildlife species on the continent.
Jansen contacted the concerned member of the public, requesting him to pass his number onto the illicit seller, who promptly sent him a message about the sale.
Jansen relayed his interest but first needed to verify the animals were alive. Video footage was sent the next morning via WhatsApp.
Satisfied, Jansen arranged a meeting at a garage near the Carousel in Hammanskraal that afternoon. The alleged smugglers didn’t know it but Jansen had back-up: the Gauteng Green Scorpions, the SAPS’s Stock Theft and Endangered Species Unit and the Bronkhorstspruit K9 Unit.
After a 40-minute wait, he was eventually led to the rear boot of a Toyota Fortuner. There, two live Temminck’s ground pangolins were curled inside two white sacks. He placed his hands on his head as a signal for the police units to move in and all five suspects were arrested.
The pangolins, severely malnourished, are recovering under the care of the team at the Johannesburg Wildlife Veterinary Hospital. Now, a week after the bust, Jansen’s phone rings as he sits in a conference room in Pretoria. “This is one of them (another trafficker) … They’ll call back.”
Jansen tells how he often uses himself as bait. “A lot of the time, they will go to a wealthy farmer or someone with a big business who will call the police.
“The information goes to the stock theft unit or the endangered species unit and they phone me. I tell them to put my number through the African bush telegraph.
“I’m permanently armed now. This is organised crime. Before and after (a sting operation), I’m shaking like a leaf. I don’t tell my wife until it’s finished.”
He does not discuss prices with the pangolin traffickers as this only fuels the illicit trade, he says.
This year, Jansen and his team have recorded 29 cases – down from 43 last year. “We’ve stopped the poaching a bit but not the demand We’ve found pangolin scales in Richards Bay, Durban Harbour and Cape Town Harbour and pangolin skins in Cape Town.
We’ve had a few busts in the Northern Cape. Gauteng is a hotspot because it’s where the money is, and on the edge of game farm areas in Nelspruit, Bushbuckridge, Tzaneen, Phalaborwa and Musina.”
The poachers on the ground are often desperate, unemployed people. “If you’re a destitute parent, and you can get your hands on a pangolin you’re going to do it, no matter what the law says.”
While there have been escalating levels of pangolin trafficking in other parts of Africa, the number of incidents in SA has been relatively low, says a new policy brief, A Question of Scales: Assessing Strategies for Countering Illegal Trafficking of Pangolins in Africa.
“However, throughout the region, especially in SA, trafficking tends to be in live Temminck’s ground pangolins rather than their scales as is the case in other parts of Africa,” writes its author Richard Chelin, a researcher at the ENACT organised crime programme at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS).
ENACT is funded by the EU and implemented by the ISS, Interpol and the Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crime.
“There is also a disturbing trend in an increased cross-border trade, specifically from Mozambique, Botswana and Zimbabwe into SA. Poachers find it easier to sell their catch in SA, where sentences for pangolin trafficking are relatively light.”
In his paper, Chelin notes how the price demanded for live pangolins has rocketed. “This indicates that traffickers have come to realise pangolins are profitable creatures. It’s less dangerous to capture a pangolin than to poach a rhino or an elephant. Unlike in other parts of Africa, there is not an established illegal market for pangolins in SA. But it’s no reason for laxity.”
In the past decade, scales from more than a million pangolins have been traded globally. The insatiable demand for their keratinous scales and meat, largely from south-east Asia, has created a lucrative illicit market run by transnational criminal syndicates.
Pangolin flesh is consumed as a delicacy and symbol of luxury and wealth. The blood and scales – crushed in powder form – are used in traditional Chinese medicine, believed to cure asthma, rheumatism, skin disorders, cancer and cerebral palsy and to promote blood circulation.
The foetus is consumed in the belief it enhances virility while the skin is turned into leather products. “In short, all parts of pangolin are profitable,” says Chelin.
Criminal networks seek to use SA as a hub to export pangolin scales from other parts of Africa to Asia, he says. As Asia’s four pangolin species are being wiped out, surging demand has seen criminal networks turn their attention to Africa’s four vulnerable species.
Across Africa, most countries use generic anti-wildlife crime policies and strategies to address the illicit trade, but Chelin argues this fails to address the loopholes in policies in dealing with the illegal trade in the species.
In SA, outdated provincial legislation and different levels of listing of the pangolins contribute to the flourishing illegal trade. There is no specific strategy to address the illicit harvesting and trafficking of pangolins while the focus is on species such as rhino and elephant. This, he says, is “’at the expense of lesser-known animals like pangolins”.
A pangolin-specific conservation strategy is urgently needed, Chelin says. “The illegal trade in pangolins presents a threat to national and regional security. Criminal networks involved in this trade are also involved in cross-border incursions and other forms of organised crime such as money laundering, illicit financial flows and arms, drugs and human trafficking.
“There are also instances where profits derived from wildlife trafficking have been used to finance terrorism-related activities and rebel groups. It has therefore become imperative to move away from the perception that the illegal trade in pangolin is purely an environmental problem but rather a form of serious transnational organised crime.”
Pangolins are easy prey for poachers, reproduce slowly and are difficult to breed in captivity. In Africa, pangolins are also targeted for their flesh skin and scales, considered a delicacy and consumed as bushmeat.
“As the growing illegal market in pangolins expanded from Asia into Africa, traffickers realised there was profit to be made from the scales as well. With the involvement of Asian criminal networks, pangolin poaching and trafficking became more sophisticated and profitable.
The figures for the past three years are concerning as they show a dramatic increase in volume,” says the brief.
This year, almost 70 tons of pangolins scales have been intercepted that left the shores of Africa. This equates to well over 100 000 African pangolins, says Jansen.
“That’s an onslaught we cannot win,” he says, explaining this is the minority as most is smuggled through clandestine networks.Curbing demand in consumer countries in Asia is crucial, says Jansen. China recently announced traditional medicines containing pangolin scales will no longer be covered by its state insurance funds.
The use of pangolin in traditional medicine in China can be traced back thousands of years. “It’s not going to go away, like the rhino trade is not going to go away. We have to somehow chop the head off the snake and that’s unfortunately a cultural thing. One of the best angles to take is to educate the youth, and Chinese youth are picking up on this.”
In SA, bigger fines and longer sentences are needed. Legislation, such as the Gauteng Nature Conservation Ordinance of 1983, is outdated and not aligned with the National Environmental Management Biodiversity Act (NEMBA). The fine for hunting a pangolin ranges from just R1500 to R2000 with prison sentences between 18 to 24 months.
By contrast, the penalty for hunting an elephant or a rhino is a fine of R100000, 10 years in prison or both. NEMBA allows for a maximum prison sentence of 10 years and a fine of R10million.
Fanie Masango, of the Gauteng Green Scorpions, who works closely with Jansen, remarks how “the poachers are laughing at us”.
Prosecutors, judges and magistrates need to be educated on the severity of wildlife crime while better co-ordination is needed between crime intelligence, police, the Hawks and conservation officers.
“In previous pangolin cases, we’ve caught undocumented foreign nationals. They get bail, they’ve fled. They give unverified addresses I’ve had a prosecutor tell me straight: ‘I’ve got murder cases to deal with and you bring me some animal?’ We need a lot more awareness.”
Jansen warns the pangolin could vanish in 20 years at the current rate of poaching and trade. Maria Diekmann, the founder of Namibia’s Rare and Endangered Species Trust, predicts a bleaker outlook: just 10 years. “A rhino is poached every eight hours. A pangolin is poached every five minutes. We have no back-up; no captive population
“Pangolins, like crocodiles, are one of the oldest living animals in the world. They’ve survived everything the world has thrown at them and yet man in the last five years is running them into extinction,” she says.
Illegal trade rampant despite highest levels of protection
In 2016, at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, 183 member nations voted to give the highest level of protection to all eight pangolin species, outlawing the international commercial trade in pangolin parts. But Jansen says the practical reality is that it is very difficult to enforce this ruling.
“The problems stem around educating law enforcement to recognize pangolin scales or even to locate them in large shipping containers leaving the ports and harbors of Africa for the east. Manpower, capacity and knowledge are huge stumbling blocks to overcome and the vast majority of shipments are still going undetected,”says Jansen.
Recent seizures of huge hauls of scales have turned Nigeria into Africa’s key illegal pangolin exporting country. The APWG’s Alexis Kriel investigates what is driving the trade in this article published in Oxpeckers.org
(Photo above: Lagos market: The peddlar offered two live pangolins to a Chinese undercover volunteer called ‘African Warrior’. Photo courtesy China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation)
“African Warrior” is a Chinese conservation activist who volunteered to travel to Nigeria in West Africa earlier this year to investigate the illegal trade in pangolins. For the sake of her security, and to protect her anonymity, her group gave her the soubriquet of a leader setting out to war.
She provided regular updates on her progress in Nigeria to the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation, the environmental NGO that sent her there. Corresponding with them on WeChat, the Chinese social media app, she described what she found in a Lagos market:
“The local peddler has two living pangolins. He can speak Chinese. The pangolins have been kept in a bag wrapped in two layers; the outer layer is a flour bag with the Chinese name of the flour printed on it, and the inside one is a yellow bag with English letters.
“The peddler kicks the pangolins with his foot, indicating that they are alive. Another ragged peddler takes a pangolin out of another bag – it is curled into a ball. He lifts it up and throws it on the ground. After the pangolin uncurls and starts to move away, the peddler steps on its tail.”
The foundation is achieving what few organisations, in China, have achieved before in the efforts to save pangolins from extinction. In September 2018 the foundation filed the first domestic public-interest litigation against the state forestry department of Guangxi Zhuang for negligence after 32 rare and endangered pangolins that had been confiscated died while in the state department’s care. In January this year, the foundation obtained notice of acceptance of the lawsuit and the first public-interest litigation case involving pangolins in China was officially approved and is currently being heard.
Since then, the Chinese government has agreed to co-operate with the foundation to create new pangolin legislation, which it hopes will lead to the elevation of pangolins from a Grade II to a Grade I animal in China. This will mean permits for hunting pangolins and the use of pangolin scales are decided on a state level, as opposed to a provincial level, affording greater protection to pangolins and regulations more in line with those contained in the Convention in International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites).
Dr Jinfeng Zhou is the Green Development Foundation’s secretary general and the first chairperson of the China Pangolin Research Centre, a private organisation established in February this year in a signed agreement with Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University.
“We must fight for change urgently. We need more stakeholders,” said Zhou.
Drastic surge: The growing demand for pangolin scales has contributed to making it the most heavily poached and trafficked mammal on the planet, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Graphic: Lori Bentley
Boasting rights
In Hong Kong business people are treated to pangolin meat openly, despite laws that prevent its consumption, and it is often used for boasting rights during business deals. The scales are used in Vietnam and China for traditional medicinal cures.
The recent drastic surge in the illegal trade of pangolin scales has created panic among conservationists and environmental NGOs, who see the spike as signalling an acceleration on the course to extinction for this endangered animal that is high on the red list of threatened species of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
A confiscation of pangolin scales from Nigeria destined for China, amounting to 9.14 tons and intercepted by Hong Kong customs in February 2019, was the single largest confiscation of pangolin scales in history.
Then, in April, there were two confiscations of scales in Singapore, a week apart. The scales were sent from Nigeria and were bound for Vietnam. The two amounts were just under 13 tons each and, combined, represented the deaths of an estimated 40,000 pangolins.
As a result of the large quantities of scales being confiscated, Jinfeng Zhou’s foundation set up a team to investigate the illegal use of pangolins in Nigeria. His team’s work is devoted to opening up avenues for co-operation with Nigeria to stem the trade and to enforce the law.
He has sent letters to the Nigerian Embassy in Beijing, the minister of environmental protection for Central Africa and to the Nigerian president, hoping to strengthen ties between the two countries for protecting pangolins and other endangered wildlife species. As a result of these letters, the foundation has been invited to participate in the National Biodiversity Conference to be held in Nigeria from May 20 to 22, under the theme “Delivering Nigeria’s business deal for nature”.
“We hope that Chinese corporations in Nigeria will bear social responsibility. They should donate to endangered wildlife, like pangolins – it is conducive for enhancing their public image to the world, and encourage their employees to participate in conservation,” Zhou said. He believes every Chinese citizen applying for a visa to visit Nigeria should be routinely informed that trade in pangolins is illegal.
“The Nigerian government must establish strict and clear laws to improve the punishment system, and at the same time increase publicity. Relevant knowledge should be popularised from rural to urban areas, with increased public participation,” he said.
Nigeria has ratified the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, which has banned all trade in Pholidota – the definitive order of pangolins, comprising all eight species. It remains the key exporting country of pangolins to Asia, however – according to the Nigeria Customs Service, in 2018 alone the illegal trade in pangolin scales seized in the country had a value of US$900-million.
Lagos is Nigeria’s largest city and has become the collecting hub for pangolin scales from Nigeria and neighbouring countries Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Republic of Congo and Gabon, according to a recent threat assessment prepared by the United Nations office on drugs and crime (UNODC).
The Nigerian law that governs protection of pangolins falls under the Endangered Species Act, which states: “No capture, local or international trade is allowed. For a first offence, a fine of US$1,500 may be imposed and/or imprisonment up to five years.”
Cites has no record of arrests or convictions under this legislation in Nigeria up to September 2017, and is currently seeking updated information in preparation for the upcoming Cites COP18 meeting.
Oxpeckers sent questions relating to the confiscations of pangolin scales originating from Nigeria this year, as well as whether there had been any arrests and prosecutions in connection with the illegal trade in pangolins, to Sikiru Tiamiyu, Nigeria’s spokesperson for the Convention on Biological Diversity, of which Nigeria is a signatory. Tiamiyu said he had passed them on to the Nigerian environment minister and the director of forestry, but their responses had not been received at the time of publication.
The former minister of environment, Ibrahim Usman Jibril, said in response to the seizure in August last year of 7,100kg of pangolin scales alleged to have originated in Nigeria by Japanese customs officials that investigations had been initiated.
The Nigerian Federal Ministry of Information and Culture quoted Jibril as saying the source of the scales could not have been Nigeria because pangolins were near extinction in the country and Nigeria was being used as a transit route for illegal wildlife trade.
“… there has not been any case of illegal wildlife trade from Nigeria as a source country. However, globalisation allows and encourages international trade which traffickers have exploited and exposed us to some of these unwholesome practices which we frown at as a nation and defender of endangered species,” he said.
Jibril resigned as environment minister in December 2018 and was not prepared to comment on the recent confiscations of scales linked to Nigeria, passing on questions to the new minister, Suleiman Hassan Zarma.
A white-bellied pangolin for sale in a ‘chopbar’ in West Africa. Photo: Rob Bruyns
Perfect storm
It is the perfect storm that brings together these two disparate countries in an exchange that suits both parties but is driving Africa’s pangolins to extinction.
In most African supply countries, pangolins are traded as bushmeat in local markets which double up as a source of scales for export to China and Vietnam. Bushmeat is used as a source of protein and of income during lean agricultural periods in many West and Central African countries.
More than half the population in Nigeria lives below the poverty line; pangolins are still available in bushmeat markets, every day – although, according to local accounts, because of alarming rates of harvesting, they are becoming harder to find.
“The market tradesman calls me often and asks me if I want pangolins,” said African Warrior. “They can get pangolins and they are looking for a market. Chinese people are eating pangolin soup in Lagos, every day.”
The African headquarters of many international Chinese companies are based in Nigeria, employing thousands of Chinese citizens who earn at least 10,000 yuan (about $1,500) a month. The American Enterprise Institute estimated the value of Chinese investments and construction contracts in Nigeria at US$21-billion between 2016 and 2018.
According to African Warrior’s research, most of the pangolins traded in Nigeria are sold to members of the Chinese community, as individual animals (for domestic use) or in bags of scales (for export).
The local traders told her they could provide from 200kg up to 500kg of scales a month. The scales are stockpiled and shipped to Asia hidden in containers and enclosed in packages labelled and marked as an inconspicuous product – such as “frozen beef” or “sliced plastics”.
Field studies in Central and West Africa conducted by UNODC showed that hunters who had previously sourced pangolins for their meat are now capitalising on the scales, and that the supply is being “crowdsourced” to include part-timer and non-specialist hunters. The meat markets serve as a central point for the aggregation of scales.
The hunters interviewed in the UNODC study knew that hunting pangolins without a licence was illegal, but most said the offence was less serious than other forms of poaching – for example, the poaching of elephants. Fear of enforcement did not play a big role in their decision making.
African Warrior said when she was in Nigeria police were present and police cars were parked at the entrance to the market in Lagos, but they turned a blind eye to the flagrant trade in wildlife.
“By the time I arrived at the market, it was afternoon. Pangolins were sold out, leaving only crocodiles, lizards, snakes and turtles – all captured from the wild. Even before entering the market, I was surrounded by peddlers who recognised me as Chinese and wanted to sell me wild animals,” she said.
Global trade: Traffic found that most of the air shipments of pangolin products out of Africa routed through European countries. Graphic: Lori Bentley
Trade routes
Research by Traffic, the global wildlife trade monitoring group, found that most of the air shipments of pangolin products out of Africa routed through European countries and that trafficking trade networks were constantly shifting.
Traffic analysed 1,270 seizure incidents between 2010 and 2015 and found that the trade involved 67 countries and territories across six continents. The report demonstrated the global nature of pangolin trafficking, which is not limited to Asian and African range countries – though trade outside of Asia and Africa is poorly understood.
The African Pangolin Working Group, a non-profit organisation set up in 2011 to conserve Africa’s pangolins, sent a team to investigate the bushmeat trade in pangolins in Ghana, West Africa, between September 2013 and January 2014. (The author of this article is the projects director of that group.)
The team found that at the rural eating houses where bushmeat is served, referred to colloquially as “chopbars”, pangolin scales used to be a by-product of the pangolins sold as bushmeat and were discarded. In recent years the scales have become a valuable commodity that is sought as the primary product, and the meat has become a derivative.
More recent research by the working group in Southern Africa found in-country and cross-border trade in pangolins in and between South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Botswana. In South Africa the trade is mostly in live pangolins, with limited scales being sold through muthi (medicine) markets for use in traditional African cures.
Colonel Johan Jooste, national commander of South Africa’s Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation in the South African Police Services, responsible for combating and preventing national priority crimes – including trade in threatened and protected species such as pangolins – said recent court cases that had resulted in convictions and sentencing of pangolin traders served as a deterrent.
“There is currently no indication of syndicates involved in the trafficking of pangolins in South Africa. All arrests show that what we are seeing is opportunistic individuals who want to make money but do not have a market to sell these animals. They are fishing for potential markets when they get arrested,” Jooste said.
Chopbar: At rural eating houses where bushmeat is served, pangolin scales have become a valuable commodity. Photo: Rob Bruyns
Criminal syndicates
Ofir Drori is the founder of Eagle, a group that has been instrumental in the arrest, prosecution and convictions of wildlife poaching and trafficking syndicates in nine African countries. He described a syndicate-driven racket behind the pangolin trade – with traffickers who have one foot in Asia and one foot in Africa propagating the supply and demand in both countries.
They are Chinese but are integrated with high-ranking government officials from Africa – corrupt ministers, ex-ministers and mayors, who are investing back into the syndicates for further buy-in from customs people and police commissioners, he said.
Drori said these networks existed in Africa from as early as the 1980s, operating in many countries simultaneously. “When there are high margins, the syndicates intimidate the freelancers and form monopolies – those who were doing rhino horn and ivory added pangolins.”
He is critical of big conservation NGOs which he believes have been aware of the syndicates trafficking wildlife for two decades but have failed to find a solution. “The only way we will be successful is if we have a very serious shift regarding conservation. There is a huge conservation machine, [but it is] not making progress,” he said.
Pangolins, now commonly referred to as the most traded mammal on earth, were previously conspicuous by their absence in conservation awareness. They have garnered attention worldwide since being uplisted from Appendix II to Appendix I by CITES at COP17 in South Africa in 2016. This legislation intended to regulate international trade, but more than two years later the international trade has increased.
Drori said the Eagle template is to be active on the ground, infiltrating criminal networks, setting up sting operations, co-operating with law enforcement agencies to enact arrests, preventing corruption and creating deterrents through awareness.
According to Drori, the criminal syndicates involved in the illegal pangolin trade have boosted the rate of distribution and increased marketing. “It is a positive-feedback-loop – pangolin scales became extremely profitable and they are establishing a cycle of ever-increasing supply and demand,” he said.
Reblogged from the Environmental Investigation Agency (see the original post here)
Members of China’s National People’s Congress, the country’s legislature, have made a public announcement to propose a ban on the use of pangolin products for traditional Chinese medicine (TCM).The proposals will be presented at this year’s annual NPC sessions, which started on 5 March.In 2016, the Congress signed into law a revised version of the country’s Wildlife Protection Law. The Environmental Investigation Agency had previously raised concerns about ambiguities and loopholes in this law, particularly those which sanction the continued trading and use of wildlife at risk of extinction.
The permits are used by designated hospitals and licensed companies that produce and sell TCM products containing pangolin.
“The position taken by China’s lawmakers proposing a ban on the use of pangolins in TCM is an encouraging sign there is support for closing domestic pangolin markets in China,” said Chris Hamley, the EIAs Senior Pangolin Campaigner.
“China’s continued use of pangolin scales and meat is a major driver of poaching and trafficking across the pangolin’s range.”
The EIA strongly urges China’s leadership and legislators to adopt the proposal for a ban on the use pangolins in TCM. Doing so would demonstrate a significant commitment to addressing one of the major driving forces in the rapid decline in wild pangolin populations across Asia and Africa.
The following article appeared in Forbes Magazine:
The Shy Scaly Animal That Could Curl Up And Die
IT’S STRAIGHT OUT OF THE PREHISTORIC AGE AND MOST PEOPLE HAVE NEVER SEEN ONE. THE PANGOLIN IS THE SHY SCALY CREATURE THAT HAS BECOME THE WORLD’S MOST TRAFFICKED AND ENDANGERED ANIMAL. IT COULD SOON DISAPPEAR FROM AFRICA, UNLESS…
Some say it walks like a drunken Velociraptor, tail out and claws curled against its chest. Others think it looks like a scaly anteater. Most ask what on earth is it? This is the little known and misunderstood pangolin, a disappearing mammal seen rarely in the African wild, even by game rangers. Its scarcity gives it a high price on the black market; so much so it faces extinction faster than the rhino. The pangolin can end up as a soup – $300 a bowl – or is used in traditional medicine in Africa and Asia.
“The best description I have come across is a pangolin looks like an artichoke with armor. It comes from the cretaceous era. Its tongue is so long it curls in its belly. It has no teeth and has powerful front claws. In Africa alone, we estimate an excess of 10,000 a year are traded. It is the most illegally traded mammal in the world,” says Ray Jansen, a professor at the University of Tshwane and Vice-Chair of the African Pangolin Working Group.
The 80-million-year-old mammals can eat 200,000 ants and termites a day and are so elusive it’s almost impossible to say exactly how many of them are out there. Jansen’s rough estimate is that there could be anywhere between 37,000 and 44,000 in Southern Africa alone. All eight varieties of this ancient species (three in Asia; one in India and four in Africa) have been flagged on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List. The issue, fears Jansen, is that because so little is known about the pangolin, blocking the illegal trade is hard.
“In April 2014, six tons of pangolin scales were confiscated in China. The amount when put into perspective is frightening; it is the equivalent of 2 million pangolins. It’s such a fascinating animal and as the awareness has grown so has the mapping of the illegal trade. We had cases where until recently; officials in America were confiscating scales thinking they were from a tortoise. The demand from the Asian market is also new. The pangolin in Asia have virtually been hunted to extinction, you can expect to pay $300 dollars for pangolin soups. So now we
are expecting the demand to gravitate toward Africa,” says Jansen.
The tall wiry Jansen is every inch a professor. It’s harder to find a pangolin than his office, which is tucked away on the fourth floor of the University of Tshwane’s Pretoria campus. When you do find him, he is buried under a mountain of paperwork and animal skeletons. Jansen is no stranger to animals. He grew up hunting guinea fowl on the open school grounds of St Stithians Boys College, in Johannesburg, before moving to Port Elizabeth to complete a PhD in ornithology. He is also a trained falconer, was part of the dog tracker unit in the army and was a teacher.
Jansen took up the plight of the pangolin in June 2011. It was the day he held a mother pangolin and her dead pup, curled in her pouch, on the verge of being smuggled out of the country.
“To hold that small dead pup in your hands and see for the first time what these fascinating creatures look like. It was so emotional. But you have to move that emotion and anger into something else; I knew at that moment that I had to do something. You could say this pup essentially started the whole project.”
The university called on his skills as an expert in genetic mapping to do more research. “It was the first mammal work I had ever done, but I found it was fascinating. The pangolin was a mystery to the scientific world. There had been no real data on its genetics or proven scientific research on its habits. We were the pioneers. It was the first time I was seeing a baby. We wanted to take the body back to the bio-bank in Pretoria to analyze its genetics. At the time no one knew what the physiology of a pangolin even was,” says Jansen.
Months later, Jansen released the mother of the dead pupmin a game reserve in the Waterberg.
On this summer’s day, Jansen is ecstatic, virtually jumping with joy. He’d just heard of a pangolin rescue by Jen Guyton, a conservationist, in the Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique. One more mother and its baby safely returned to the wild. He digs into his drawers and pulls out his cell phone.
“This is an example of the problem we were facing,” he says handing over the phone.
On the phone is a screengrab of an advert for a pangolin for sale on Alibaba, the $231-billion Chinese e-commerce company; a lesson that the pangolin is never far from the consumers mind. Jansen removed the advert.
Since 2011, Jansen has breathed life into the topic. His efforts have caught the ear of the famous.
“The pangolin runs the risk of becoming extinct before most people have even heard of them,” says Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, who lent his voice in a video blog campaign against wildlifetrafficking in November.
Closer to home, South African-born Nicky Oppenheimer, whose family is worth $6.8 billion and is the third richest man in Africa, according to Forbes, has thrown his weight behind the cause. His philanthropic interest is in finding a solution to the largest killer of pangolins in South Africa – electrified game fences.
“Pangolins walk on their hind feet so when they make contact with the lower wire it’s at their belly height. They then curl instinctively around
the wire. In the end they are pulsed to death,” says Jansen.
Along with the poachers, electricity could kill off the pangolin before the next sale on Alibaba.
“What is a pangolin? The research we did revealed that the pangolin is most closely related to a cat. It’s not even on the same genetics as an armadillo,” says Jansen.
Jansen and Oppenheimer hope the pangolin, like the cat, will have nine lives.
