Page 80 - World of Animals - Issue #29

Conserving the pangolin

Protecting pangolins What work and research are you currently involved in?
I became aware of the serious problems facing the pangolin 15 years ago and we
Stewart Muir is a director for the Whitley Wildlife Conservation Trust. established the first conservation and rehabilitation centre at Cuc Phuong National
He has passionately supported pangolin conservation for many years
Park in Vietnam. In the beginning, it was hard to get people to listen. Most people
Why are pangolins so endangered? had never heard of a pangolin and were unaware of the scale of the problem. My own
Pangolins are now the most heavily-traded wild mammal in the organisation and many other zoos have raised funds and worked together, supporting
world. The scales covering their body are in great demand for traditional the Vietnamese team at the Carnivore and Pangolin Conservation Programme and,
medicine in Africa, Asia and particularly in China. Pangolins are inoffensive, insect- more recently, the newly-established Save Vietnam’s Wildlife. Over time, we have
eating creatures that roll into a ball when threatened. This makes them very easy to learnt a lot about keeping and maintaining the animals on their road to recovery. Just
catch by poachers using wire snares or trained dogs. Many of them are transported getting the pangolins to survive long enough to make a healthy return to the wild has
alive for many days until they reach their final destination. Even those that are rescued been a major achievement that has taken many years.
are lucky to survive. Their insect diet of live ants makes caring for them, until they are
strong enough to be released back into the wild, difficult and complicated. How do you think pangolin populations will fare in the next 50 years?
As pangolins become more scarce, their commercial value will increase and their
What do you think makes pangolins so desirable to poachers, and can they ever decline will become ever more rapid. Only through concentrated international efforts
be stopped? to protect them and educating people to reduce the demand will we save these
Ease of capture and transportation together with a high demand is proving fatal for charming and defenceless animals from extinction.
the pangolins. The four African and four Asian species are all under a high degree of
threat. Recently, the amount of protection through CITES (Convention of International How can World of Animals readers get actively involved with helping to conserve the
Trade of Endangered Species) has increased – certainly all of the Asian species at least dwindling pangolin populations? © Alamy; FLPA; Nature PL; The Art Agency/Ken Oliver
are now listed on the IUCN Red List as Endangered or Critically Endangered, therefore The best thing that World of Animals readers can do is talk about pangolins – have
increasing their protection, if only by law. However, as the pangolins become less your friends even heard of them and do they know how much trouble they are
common, their price and the risks that poachers are willing to take goes up. Effective in? Pangolins need friends. You can directly support a project in Vietnam through the
law enforcement is important but getting local people to support and protect Save Vietnam’s Wildlife website www.savevietnamswildlife.org and also support the
pangolins is vital. work of the IUCN Pangolin Specialist Group.

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