Reclusive, gentle and quick to roll up into a ball, pangolins keep a low profile. But they are also the world's most heavily trafficked mammal, and experts at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) conference this week are ringing alarm bells over their survival. Demand for pangolin meat and body parts has fuelled a bloodbath, and driven the scale-covered, ant-eating mammal towards extinction. More than a million pangolins are believed to have been poached from the wild in the past decade. Most are used to supply demand in China and Vietnam, where they are highly regarded as a delicacy and an ingredient in traditional medicine.
"There has been a massive surge in the illegal take of the pangolin for its meat and for its scales." CITES chief John Scanlon told AFP. Currently CITES allows for trade in pangolins, but under strict conditions.
There are four species of pangolin in Africa and four in Asia. Watchdogs say those in Asia are being eaten to extinction, while populations in Africa are declining fast.
Pangolins are covered in overlapping scales, and have pink, sticky tongues almost as long as their bodies. When physically threatened, they curl into ball, making it easy for them to be picked up by hunters and put into a sack. About the size of a small dog, they are solitary, mostly nocturnal and cannot be farmed. In Chinese traditional medicine, pangolin scales are ground into a powder believed to cure conditions from headaches and menstrual cramps to nose bleeding and lack of virility. The scales are sometimes even used as guitar plectrums. In traditional African culture, some people believe in keeping a scale in their pockets to ward off evil.
According to Jansen, in South Africa a pangolin can sell for anything between R10 000 ($730) to R80 000 ($5 800) depending on the client.
Source: News24
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