Pangolins On The Brink As Africa-China Trafficking Persists Unabated

Pangolins on the brink as Africa-China trafficking persists unabated 2/28/19, 10)21 AM
Mongabay Series: Almost Famous Animals
Pangolins on the brink as Africa-China

traﬃcking persists unabated
by Sharon Guynup on 8 May 2018 |
Pangolins are the most

trafficked mammal in the
world, with more than a
million snatched from the wild
https://news.mongabay.com/2018/05/pangolins-on-the-brink-as-africa-china-trafficking-persists-unabated/ Page 1 of 30
in the past decade, according

to IUCN estimates. The four
Asian species have been
hunted nearly to extinction,
while the four African species
are being poached in record
numbers.
The illegal trade largely goes
to China and other East Asian
nations, where pangolin meat
is an expensive delicacy
served to flaunt wealth and
influence. Pangolin is also a
preferred ingredient in
traditional medicine in Asia
and Africa. Traditional healers
in Sierra Leone use pangolin
to treat 59 medical conditions,
though there is no evidence of
efficacy.
In 2016, pangolins were given
the highest level of protection
under the Convention on
International Trade in
Endangered Species (CITES), a
multilateral treaty signed by
183 nations. But laws and
enforcement in African
nations, along illegal trade
routes, and in Asia continue to
be weak, with conservationists
working hard to strengthen
them.
Pangolins don’t thrive in
captivity, but the Tikki

Hywood Foundation in
Zimbabwe and Save Vietnam’s
Wildlife have succeeded in
rescuing confiscated
pangolins and restoring them
to the wild. Six U.S. zoos are
trying to raise pangolins as
part of the controversial
Pangolin Consortium project
— only 29 of 45 imported
individuals remain alive.
The pangolin looks like a mythical or prehistoric

armored beast. While its thick overlapping scales
protect it from predators such as lions, this animal
is an easy mark for illegal wildlife traffickers. Image
courtesy of the Tikki Hywood Foundation,
Zimbabwe.
Acting on a tip, Nigerian customs

operatives raided an apartment in the
southwest city of Ikeja in February.
Inside, they found some 4,400 pounds of

pangolin scales, and 218 ivory tusks —
and arrested a Chinese suspect, Ko Sin
Ying, who lived there.
A few months earlier, at the other end
of a well-worn trade route, Chinese
customs officials made the largest-ever
seizure of pangolin scales in the port of
Shenzhen. They discovered an “empty”
shipping container that had come in
from Africa — stuffed with 13 tons of
scales. They were packaged in bags that
camouflaged their true contents beneath
a veneer of charcoal. That haul had
killed an estimated 20,000 to 30,000
animals, each about as big as a medium-
sized dog.
These incidents provide a small window
into the sheer magnitude of pangolin
poaching in Africa. INTERPOL
estimates that seizures account for just
10 percent of the actual illegal wildlife
trade. “Species in Africa are being
sucked up at record-breaking levels,”
says Paul Thomson, vice Chair of the
International Union for the Conservation
of Nature’s (IUCN) Pangolin Specialist
Group and co-founder of the
conservation project Save Pangolin
(http://savepangolins.org/).
Rescued pangopup at Tikki Hywood Foundation.

Image courtesy of the Tikki Hywood Foundation,
Zimbabwe.
The pangolin crisis

goes critical
This shy, toothless, insect-eating animal
is the planet’s most-trafficked mammal
and wildlife traders now target Africa’s
four pangolin species because the four
Asian pangolin species have been
hunted to near extinction, poached off
the continent.
The pangolin’s demise has sparked a
wave of protection efforts, as biologists
scramble to count how many are left in
the wild; conservationists lobby to
strengthen conservation and
enforcement measures by government;
and a U.S. consortium of zoos has

launched a controversial captive
breeding program.
Pangolins are covered in overlapping
plates from nose to tail. They look like a
cross between an armadillo and an
anteater, though they’re related to
neither. Those scales command
substantial sums on the black market,
but their meat, blood and fetuses are
also in high demand.
They’ve been increasingly smuggled in
shipments out of Africa that sometimes
include elephant ivory, says Lisa
Hywood, CEO and founder of the Tikki
Hywood Foundation
(http://www.tikkihywoodtrust.org), an
animal rescue, rehabilitation and release
facility in Zimbabwe. Pangolins are
shipped live, in pieces, skinned, fresh or
frozen, sometimes disguised as fish or
dog biscuits. And they’re often exported
with falsified documents from any of the
31 African countries they call home.
Smuggled pangolin meat seized at Miami

International Airport, USA. Photo credit: USFWS
Headquarters on Visualhunt / CC BY
As severe as the crisis is, many people

have still never even heard of the
pangolin. But about a million of these
solitary, nocturnal creatures have likely
been killed over the last decade. The
greatest demand for the animals and
their parts comes from China, with
significant quantities also shipped to
Vietnam and Hong Kong.
Another ten years’ poaching at current
levels could wipe out the last critically
endangered Chinese (M. pentadactyla) and
Malayan (M. javanica) pangolins. They’ve
long been under threat: an article
published in 1938 in the journal Nature
(https://www.nature.com/articles/141072b0?
foxtrotcallback=true) warned that Asian
pangolin species needed greater
protection. Although the commercial East

Asian trade has been documented since
the early 20th century, the number of
customers who can afford to pay high
prices for pangolin meat or medicine
continues to rise in tandem with growing
affluence in China and other Asian
countries.
Pangolin fetus soup or meat is often the most expensive
item on the menu at Asian restaurants and is served as a
delicacy to flaunt wealth and influence. At special dinners,
the animal is sometimes brought to the table alive, then
fileted and cooked in front of guests, says IUCN’s
Thomson. A recent scandal involves officials in Guangxi
who are under investigation
(http://shanghaiist.com/2017/02/07/pangolin_banquet.php)
for allegedly serving pangolin at a banquet for a
delegation of Hong Kong entrepreneurs.
Range of the four Asia pangolin species: the

Chinese, Indian, Sunda and Philippine pangolins. A
mix of colors within the maps indicates an overlap
in the different speciesʼ distributions. Image

courtesy of University of Adelaide/TRAFFIC.
Range of the four Africa pangolin species: the giant,

tree, ground, and long-tailed pangolins. The
speciesʼ ranges are based on the IUCN Red List
assessments (IUCN 2014). Note: The distribution
maps are currently being updated by the IUCN
Pangolin Specialist Group. Image courtesy of
University of Adelaide/TRAFFIC.
To a lesser degree, the animal is eaten

as bushmeat in Africa — an increasingly
expensive delicacy sold in markets and
restaurants. Pangolin is also a preferred
ingredient in traditional medicine on a
continent where some 80 percent of
residents rely on such “cures.” A survey
of traditional healers in Sierra Leone
found that 22 different pangolin body

parts were used to treat 59 conditions;
most practitioners were unaware that
they were helping push the animals
toward extinction.
For millennia, pangolin scales have been
cooked in vinegar, oil, boy’s urine, or
roasted with dirt or oyster shells to treat
a long list of health problems. These
pangolin-based remedies are believed to
calm hysterically crying children,
stimulate lactation in nursing mothers,
free women possessed by devils and
ogres, drain pus, treat liver problems,
malaria, deafness and more. In Taiwan,
some drink a concoction of pangolin
blood and wine for its purported health
benefits. Thomson has heard reports of
people using it to treat cancer, which,
he worries “could take pangolin
poaching to a whole other level.”
Pangolin scales are made of keratin, like
human fingernails. They have no
scientifically proven medicinal value.
The developed world also plays a role in the illegal
trade: there’s been a documented decades-long
leather market in the United States for pangolin skin
cowboy boots, belts and wallets. Between 1980 and
1985, more than 165,000 pangolin skins were legally
exported from Asia into the U.S. according to a
report submitted to the U.S. Department of the
Interior. Between 2005 and 2014, U.S. Customs
officials seized about 30,000
(https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/03/160315-
pangolins-Vietnam-wildlife-trafficking/) illegally
imported pangolins.
To defend itself against predators, a pangolin rolls

itself into a ball, making it easy for a poacher to pop
in a bag. Photo credit: Wildlife Alliance on Visual
hunt / CC BY-SA
Conservationists take
action
Pangolins are easy to catch: you don’t
need a gun; they’re slow moving, not
dangerous and are easily caught in
snares set for bushmeat. The animals
protect themselves from top predators
including lions, leopards and hyenas by
rolling into an armored ball, making it
simple for hunters to snatch them up
and toss them into a sack. They’re
named for that behavior: the word

“pangolin” comes from the Malay
“pengguling,” meaning something that
rolls up.
While poaching poses the greatest
threat to their longterm survival, the
pangolin’s slide toward oblivion has
been compounded by habitat loss in
both Africa and Asia, areas where
human populations are exploding.
With all eight species in precipitous
decline, the global conservation
community responded in 2016. Pangolins
were then given the highest level of
protection under a multilateral treaty
signed by 183 nations, the Convention
on International Trade in Endangered
Species (CITES).
All commercial cross-border trade in
pangolins or their parts is now illegal
planet-wide, which highlights the
seriousness of their plight. “The fact
that we have to vote for an animal to be
uplisted means that we as a human race
have actually failed that species,” notes
Hywood.
Listing has, however, brought much-
needed attention to, and funding for,
pangolin conservation. The priorities
now, “are to really focus our efforts on
stopping the poaching, stopping the
trade and stopping the demand,” says
Jeffrey Flocken, senior vice president of
programs and policy at the nonprofit

Humane Society International
(mailto:http://www.hsi.org).
This map shows the top 29 trade routes that have

been used five times or more in international
pangolin (Manis spp.) trafficking incidents between
2010 and 2015. The 12 trade routes used in five or
six consecutive years are displayed in red. Note:
The start and end points of a trade route have been
approximately centralized per country/territory and
do not indicate a specific location within a country.
Image courtesy of University of Adelaide/TRAFFIC.
Trafficked quantities of pangolins (Manis spp.) and

their products showing: (a) the weight in kilograms;
and (b) the count (number of items of individuals,
scales or body parts). The quantities are shown for
the top ten countries/territories involved in the
most incidents of pangolin trafficking, ordered by
their involvement in trafficking. The graph notes
either count or weight. Image courtesy of University
of Adelaide/TRAFFIC.
To halt the trade, home-range countries

need to back the CITES’ mandate by
enacting and enforcing stringent national
laws. Currently, just 17-pangolin range states
have legislation that meets CITES
requirements; 31 do not, says Elly Pepper,
deputy director of the Natural Resources
Defense Council’s Wildlife Trade Initiative
(mailto:https://www.nrdc.org/issues/wildlife-
trade) “A lot of pangolin range states don’t
have strong penalties for wildlife trafficking,
or sentencing guidelines, so many wildlife
traffickers go unpunished.” Both China and
Vietnam are signatories to CITES, but while
customs officials make occasional, highly

publicized busts at the borders, sale and
use of pangolin products is rampant in both
countries.
Hywood emphasizes that effective
protection in Africa will require unified
regional conservation strategies. “If we
were to do it country-by-country, it
would take an incredibly long time. And
I believe that the pangolin, sadly,
doesn’t have that much time. Time is
running out,” she says.
Without political will and proper funding
for enforcement, even the best laws
won’t stop the slaughter. And across
their range, enforcement is lacking —
with most seizures and arrests
happening after pangolins are already
dead. Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior
fellow at the Brookings Institution in
Washington, DC says that to deter
criminal activity, there must be at least a
50 to 60 percent arrest-to-prosecution
rate to provide a real deterrent, or a real
financial incentive.
Experts agree that educating local
communities — and offering tangible
rewards for conserving wildlife — is key
to preventing poaching and keeping
animals alive.
“General awareness is not going to save
the species,” says Flocken. “We need to
reach out to stakeholders on the ground
who live with pangolins, and to
populations that are consuming

pangolins, because there will always be
trade if there is demand.” He notes that
it will take “serious regional
campaigning in the countries stimulating
the demand. We’ll have to get online,
use influencers and work with local
partners who know consumers best.”
There has been some recent progress in
reducing demand for exotic wildlife
products in China, that may in time
potentially extend to pangolins. In
January, the country shut down its
domestic ivory market. And a new
analysis (https://wildaid.org/wp-
content/uploads/2018/02/WildAid-
Sharks-in-Crisis-2018.pdf) by the
nonprofit environmental group WildAid
estimates that consumption of shark fin
soup has dropped by 80 percent in
mainland China. “It seems that the
younger generation is not as interested
in traditional medicines as the older
generation, so I think there is an
opportunity to educate and create a
mass change in public perception,” says
Pepper.
A pangolin digs into a termite mound. Image

courtesy of the Tikki Hywood Foundation,
Zimbabwe.
The need for more

knowledge
A dearth of knowledge regarding the
remaining number of pangolins in the
wild is hindering their conservation. So
the IUCN Pangolin Specialist Group
(http://www.pangolinsg.org) is currently
gathering population data to quantify
the survivors. The group is part of the
IUCN Species Survival Commission,
which works to save individual species
by providing expert scientific
knowledge, influencing policy and
implementing conservation efforts in the
field.
“We don’t even know how many

pangolins there are left to save, so we’re
fighting a silent war,” says Hywood.
But these animals are notoriously hard
to count. Pangolins are solitary except
when a mother is raising a pup. They’re
predominantly nocturnal and many sleep
burrowed underground during the day.
Some are arboreal, and all are too small
to detect in aerial surveys.
For these same reasons, researchers
know little about pangolins beyond the
basics. Both Asian and African pangolin
species evolved to efficiently harvest
the ants and termites they survive on,
with tiny heads and sharp, lengthy claws
to reach into and rip apart nests, and
thick eyelids to protect them from
swarming insects as they eat. Since they
have no teeth, they slurp them up with
long, thin, sticky tongues that extend all
the way into their pelvis — the longest
of any mammal, up to twice their body
length. They have poor eyesight, no
external ears, but excellent hearing and
find their prey using their acute sense of
smell.
The pangolinʼs sticky tongue extends into its pelvis

— the longest of any mammal, up to twice the body
length. Image courtesy of the Tikki Hywood
Foundation, Zimbabwe.
A snapshot of the
trade
In recent years, pangolin products have been seized in 67 countries and
territories across six continents, according to a recent report
(http://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/157301/27779360/1513337200303/global-
pangolin-assessment.pdf?token=AeKuKckWFFsgqSEbRjHvTFDHpGM%3D)
by TRAFFIC, a nonprofit that tracks wildlife trade.
The animals were transported along 159
unique international trade routes using
every imaginable means of transport:
sent via large international shipping
companies, moved on foot, by
motorcycle, car, train, on container
ships, speedboats and planes. TRAFFIC
found that most of the air shipments out
of Africa routed through Europe;

traffickers shift trade routes regularly to
avoid detection.
The largest shipments have come from
Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Cameroon, and
Uganda, Economic ties between East
Asia and many African nations facilitate
this illegal trade, the report says.
Logging, mining, drilling and
agribusiness projects level forests and
create inroads and access points to
previously intact habitat all across the
African continent, while improved
transportation systems and busy trade
routes to Asia make trafficking easier.
“The connection between a rise in
poaching and trade of pangolins and
other wildlife seems to coincide with a
larger Chinese presence in Africa,” says
Thomson.
A recent study
(https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-
02/uos-nss021618.php) published in the African
Journal of Ecology found that hunters in Gabon
are selling ever-growing numbers of pangolins
to Asian workers. The animals or their parts are
then smuggled across remote forested national
borders. Local subsistence hunters are probably
not the drivers of this illegal activity, according
to Katharine Abernethy, one of the study’s
authors and a professor at the University
of Stirling, UK. Rather the trade “is likely to be
[conducted by] criminal hunting organizations,

possibly those who are also trading in ivory in
the region, as the markets are similar.”
New genetics research is using pangolin DNA to create a global
DNA map of the eight species, which conservationists and law
enforcement can then match to seizures of smuggled pangolins to
identify where the animals originate. To collect DNA, University of
Washington
(mailto:https://www.biology.washington.edu/people/profile/samuel-
k-wasser) biologist Sam Wasser and graduate student Hyeon Jeong
Kim employ several dogs that they’ve trained to find pangolin
feces. Wasser says that once you can identify poaching hotspots
you can send in the troops.
In February, the U.S. Agency for
International Development (USAID)
released a new guide
(https://rmportal.net/library/pangolin-
species-identification-guide-a-rapid-
assessment-tool-for-field-and-desk) to
help law enforcement officers identify
pangolin species and pangolin parts that
investigators may encounter in the field.
The Tikki Hywood Foundation sanctuary team in

Zimbabwe. Every rescued pangolin is assigned its
own minder who takes it out to forage for food each
day. Image courtesy of the Tikki Hywood
Foundation, Zimbabwe.
Pangolins in captivity
As more trafficked pangolins are seized,
conservationists are faced with a
conundrum: how to successfully return
confiscated pangolins to the wild, and
how to successfully raise orphans. More
and more, the survival of each animal
counts, as every pangolin species grows
ever-rarer. The animals don’t rebound
quickly: they give birth to a single pup
about once per year.
Unfortunately, pangolins rarely survive
for long in captivity, says Lisa Hywood,
for a multitude of reasons. The animals
are solitary and easily stressed. They’re
very sensitive to noise, changes in
temperature, and as nocturnal animals,
to light. They also require a not-easily-
procured specialized insect diet.
To date, conservationists have achieved
their greatest successes with captive
pangolins in two locations: the Tikki
Hywood Foundation in Africa, and Save
Vietnam’s Wildlife
(http://www.savevietnamswildlife.org) in
Asia, centers that have pioneered and
perfected rescue, recovery and release

techniques over many years. Hywood is
sharing what she’s learned with new
pangolin rescue programs in Cameroon,
Liberia and Uganda.
One reason for Hywood’s success in
rehabilitating and releasing pangolins,
she says, is that the animals are never
caged. Instead, all are assigned a single
minder who walks with them in the bush
every day, taking them to nests to feed
and caring for them until they can be
released.
In 2016, a number of U.S. zoos partnered
to launch an effort to raise and breed
pangolins
(https://news.mongabay.com/2018/01/u-
s-zoos-learn-how-to-keep-captive-
pangolins-alive-helping-wild-ones/) in
captivity. The Pangolin Consortium
(https://pangolinconsortium.org) —
comprised of six zoos and a recently
formed nonprofit, Pangolin Conservation
— imported 45 white bellied pangolins
from Togo. The animals were located by
African farmers then collected by a
“trained acquisition team,” according to
a recent report submitted to the
Pangolin Specialist Group.
This rescued pangopup was lucky. It escaped the

near certain death that would have awaited it along
the 29 known global pangolin trafficking routes.
Image courtesy of the Tikki Hywood Foundation,
Zimbabwe.
The researchers at the zoos hope to

gain an understanding about pangolin
gestation and treatment of disease,
along with other knowledge that could
increase survivability of confiscated
animals, says Bill Ziegler, a spokesman
for the consortium and the senior vice
president of animal programs at the
Chicago Zoological Society’s (CZS)
Brookfield Zoo.
One of the captive animals is currently
being exhibited at Chicago’s Brookfield
Zoo, while the rest remain secluded and
out of public view.
Some experts are dubious of the
effectiveness of the consortium’s
approach. Hywood says that conditions
in a U.S. zoo are so different from that

of a wild pangolin in Africa or Asia that
information gleaned from these captive
animals may not translate.
Flocken also questions the worth of the project:
“Whatever knowledge they can gain about how to
reproduce [these animals] in captivity, particularly given
the lack of success of this [effort], despite decades and
decades of trying, is questionable at best.” He does
acknowledge the valuable role that zoos, governments
and the public can play in helping save pangolins in situ
through education and financial contributions, citing the
Houston Zoo
(mailto:https://www.houstonzoo.org/conservation/plight-
pangolin-learn-helping-save-one-threatened-species-
earth/), which supports conservation in the wild —
without physically keeping captive pangolins.
Countries or territories implicated in pangolin

(Manis spp.) trafficking incidents between 2010–
2015, regardless of their role in trade routes (i.e.
transit, origin or destination location), based on all
of the available data (n = 1270 incidents). African
and Asian pangolin range countries are depicted by
thick, black country borders. Image courtesy of
University of Adelaide/TRAFFIC.
Others have been troubled by what they

call an air of secrecy, which has
surrounded the Pangolin Consortium’s
effort from the start. The IUCN SSC
Pangolin Specialist Group and a number
of nonprofits contacted the consortium
in 2016 and asked for specific
information about its pangolin
husbandry practices and conservation
strategy. There was concern then over
the import of endangered wild animals
from Africa, and about protocols: the
consortium had failed to reach out to
experts with the greatest knowledge of
pangolin care. It also took two years for
the consortium to respond to those
questions and its website
(mailto:https://pangolinconsortium.org)
remains virtually data-free.
Some common ground has been found,
however. At a recent meeting between
the Pangolin Consortium and pangolin
conservation organizations, the U.S.
zoos committed to not importing any
more pangolins from the wild.
Mongabay learned that eight of the
females arrived in the U.S. pregnant, and
each birthed one pup. Five of those
eight survived, and five more females
are pregnant.
But of the 45 adults that were imported, only 29 remain
alive. The number of deaths, say pangolin experts,
underscores The US Fish and Wildlife Service’s conclusion
(https://www.fws.gov/international/animals/pangolins.html)
that “Pangolins in general do not thrive in captivity.” The

world’s top experts at the IUCN SSC Pangolin Specialist
Group rated pangolin “conservation breeding” among its
lowest priorities in its 2014 Conservation Action Plan.
Pangolin scale burn in Cameroon. Photo credit: Linh

Nguyen Ngoc Bao /
USFWS Headquarters on Visual hunt / CC BY
Uncertain future
Pangolins are highly intelligent animals,
and occupy a unique branch on the tree
of life — being the only creature in the
Pholidota order. It split off from
Carnivora some 87 million years ago, an
order that includes cats, dogs, bears,
seals, and other meat eaters).
Hywood notes that in general, humans
feel more inclined to save animals that
live in socially structured families,
including elephants or chimps. She

argues that pangolins fall into this
category because of the many social
activities a mother pangolin uses to
nurture her new born: breastfeeding,
keeping her infant clean and carrying
her offspring on her back for the first
months of life.
“They protect that baby with their entire
being.” She adds that “as humans, we
need to start accepting what we are
destroying — and say enough is
enough.”
The survival of these unusual animals is
intrinsically linked to the survival of
other species, says Hywood, who calls
the pangolin “nature’s true gardeners.”
As they dig for ants and termites, they
loosen and aerate the soil, she explains,
creating “an environment where seeds
can germinate and grow into plants that
feed other species.” Pangolins offer
another important ecosystem service:
they regulate ant and termite
populations, with a single adult
individual consuming millions of insects
each year.
While some African governments are
strengthening their pangolin
protections, it’s not happening fast
enough. In 2017, officials seized about
47 tons of scales on the continent. That
statistic alone indicates that pangolins
are in an extremely dire position,

remaining in high demand in Asia and
elsewhere.
All hands are needed on deck to prevent
extinction, says Thomson. “I wake up at
night gripped with fear for all eight
species.”
F EEDBACK: Use this form
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An historic artistʼs rendering of a pangolin. The

future looks increadingly dire for the worldʼs eight
pangolin species unless public awareness and
outrage grows over ongoing trafficking, forcing
national governments into taking effective action.
Photo credit: BioDivLibrary on VisualHunt.com / CC
BY
Article published by Glenn Scherer

Pangolins On The Brink As Africa-China Trafficking Persists Unabated

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Pangolins on the brink as Africa-China trafficking persists unabated 2/28/19, 10)21 AM

Mongabay Series: Almost Famous Animals

Pangolins on the brink as Africa-China

Pangolins are the most

in the past decade, according

captivity, but the Tikki

The pangolin looks like a mythical or prehistoric

Acting on a tip, Nigerian customs

Inside, they found some 4,400 pounds of

Rescued pangopup at Tikki Hywood Foundation.

The pangolin crisis

and a U.S. consortium of zoos has

Smuggled pangolin meat seized at Miami

As severe as the crisis is, many people

protection. Although the commercial East

Range of the four Asia pangolin species: the

in the different speciesʼ distributions. Image

Range of the four Africa pangolin species: the giant,

To a lesser degree, the animal is eaten

found that 22 different pangolin body

To defend itself against predators, a pangolin rolls

named for that behavior: the word

programs and policy at the nonprofit

This map shows the top 29 trade routes that have

Trafficked quantities of pangolins (Manis spp.) and

To halt the trade, home-range countries

customs officials make occasional, highly

populations that are consuming

A pangolin digs into a termite mound. Image

The need for more

“We don’t even know how many

The pangolinʼs sticky tongue extends into its pelvis

of Africa routed through Europe;

[conducted by] criminal hunting organizations,

The Tikki Hywood Foundation sanctuary team in

perfected rescue, recovery and release

This rescued pangopup was lucky. It escaped the

The researchers at the zoos hope to

in a U.S. zoo are so different from that

Countries or territories implicated in pangolin

Others have been troubled by what they

that “Pangolins in general do not thrive in captivity.” The

Pangolin scale burn in Cameroon. Photo credit: Linh

including elephants or chimps. She

are in an extremely dire position,

An historic artistʼs rendering of a pangolin. The

Article published by Glenn Scherer

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