Asia’s Vanishing Pangolins
Saving three Critically Endangered pangolins before it’s too late.
No animal on Earth is quite like the pangolin.
With its coat of hard scales, long snout and thick claws, and its tendency to curl up into a ball, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was some mythical creature. But pangolins are an ancient species that have crawled across our planet for over 80 million years, and the increasing activities of wildlife criminals in recent decades are threatening their continued existence.
Pangolins are the most illegally trafficked wild mammals in the world.
In the last five years, authorities have confirmed that wildlife criminals have killed hundreds of thousands of these slow-moving, easily captured animals. Yet this is only a fraction of the true number of pangolins experts believe have been poached for their meat and scales, which are highly prized commodities in Asian and African markets. This growing illegal trade has left all eight species of pangolins facing extinction.
To fight against the rampant poaching and trafficking of pangolins, the Wildlife Conservation Network partnered with Save Pangolins to create the Pangolin Crisis Fund (PCF). Since 2019, the PCF has raised over $5 million to invest in a global array of projects that protect pangolins and their habitats, support authorities in combating illegal wildlife trade networks, and reduce the demand for pangolin products.
Rarest of the Rare
While all pangolins are threatened, three species are closer to the brink than the rest—the Chinese pangolin, the Sunda pangolin, and the Palawan pangolin. All three species are deemed Critically Endangered by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species , and all three reside in Asia, where demand for pangolin products is highest.
The PCF is focused on saving all pangolin species, but these three are of particular concern because there are so few of them left. If they are not protected, we could lose them entirely.
Chinese Pangolins
Chinese pangolins are solitary, predominantly nocturnal animals that, while capable of climbing, spend most of their lives on the ground of forests and hillsides. They feast on ants and termites, digging deep into the dirt with their large claws to locate insect nests.
The historic range of Chinese pangolins extends throughout Bhutan, China, Hong Kong, India, Laos, Myanmar, Nepal, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. Yet in reality, Chinese pangolins are considered functionally extinct in mainland China due to years of pervasive poaching.
Sunda Pangolins
Sunda pangolins are also solitary and most active at night, but unlike their Chinese cousins, they live primarily arboreal lives. Using their prehensile tails, they climb high into trees in search of ants, to sleep in hollows, and to evade predators. They are found throughout the tropical forests and lowlands of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.
They have adapted to survive near agricultural development, where forests are often cleared for palm and rubber plantations, but they are still highly susceptible to the activities of wildlife criminals. It’s estimated that Sunda pangolins have suffered an alarming 80% population decline across Southeast Asia.
Palawan Pangolins
The world’s most elusive pangolin, the Palawan pangolin, is found only in the Palawan province of the Philippines. While it frequents a variety of habitats, it has the smallest range of all pangolin species. Very little is known about Palawan pangolins, but their diminutive range and small population size make them vulnerable to heavy poaching that feeds the illegal wildlife trade.
Pushed to the Brink
Pangolins are known as “Nature’s Gardeners” because they consume millions of insects every year, helping protect local vegetation from being devoured. They also help aerate the soil of habitats all over the world by using their claws to dig burrows or search for food, which facilitates the nutrient cycle and plays an important role in ecosystem health. While pangolins are not a keystone species, their presence would be sorely missed in the wild.
Pangolin products in an Asian market.
The demand for pangolin scales and meat largely stems from China and Vietnam, where people pay top dollar for these illegal products as food and for use in traditional medicines, despite a lack of any evidence that pangolin scales have medicinal properties. While it is illegal to poach pangolins in China, it is still legal to sell patented medicinal products that contain components sourced from pangolins.
Asian pangolins have dwindled so dramatically over the years that poachers now also target African pangolins to meet this demand, using countries like Nigeria and Vietnam as transit hubs to send pangolins overseas and distribute pangolin products to China, respectively. Local people in Nigeria, Cameroon, and Vietnam are also some of the largest consumers of pangolin meat.
The Environmental Investigation Agency estimates that, between 2017 and 2021, over 600,000 pounds of pangolin scales were seized from illegal traffickers by authorities. This is likely only a small portion of the true amount trafficked across Africa and Asia.
On the Frontlines of Conservation
To prevent the three Critically Endangered pangolin species from going extinct in the wild, the PCF is supporting a number of local organizations dedicated to saving them.
Prioritizing Chinese Pangolins
Chinese pangolins across Nepal are under pressure from habitat destruction and poaching. Most conservation programs in the country are focused on protecting megafauna like rhinos and tigers, often leaving pangolins without many on-the-ground protections.
With support from the PCF, Greenhood Nepal is assessing habitat throughout Chitwan National Park and Parsa National Park, two of Nepal’s most secure protected areas, to monitor Chinese pangolins and support park management in creating protections specifically for them. By working with park authorities and local communities, Greenhood Nepal is ensuring that Chinese pangolins are made a priority in conservation planning and included on the list of species protected by local rangers.
Defending Sunda Pangolins
Planet Indonesia is empowering local communities across West Kalimantan, Indonesia to take an active role in protecting Sunda pangolins. With PCF funding, they are enlisting community members to assist authorities in patrolling the forests where Sunda pangolins live. This will act as a deterrence to wildlife criminals and potentially aid in their arrest. By incentivizing their participation in pangolin conservation, Planet Indonesia is showing these communities that conservation can help improve their quality of life, making these interventions more successful.
Another PCF grantee, Wild Earth Allies , seeks to shield Sunda pangolins from the illegal wildlife trade in Cambodia. There is no reliable population estimate for this country’s pangolins, yet authorities regularly confiscate them from poachers. Wild Earth Allies is assessing the status of Sunda pangolins in Cambodia to fill critical knowledge gaps on their distribution and better understand how poachers are finding them. They will also engage local communities to get involved with the monitoring of pangolin habitats.
Relief for Palawan Pangolins
In December 2021, Typhoon Rai hit Palawan, the archipelagic province of the Philippines and sole home of the Palawan pangolin. The storm devastated about 90% of Palawan’s infrastructure, leaving most of the human population without shelter, electricity, or clean water. It also caused massive damage to up to 85% of the Palawan pangolins’ forests.
House in Palawan, Philippines destroyed by Typhoon Rai.
With PCF funding, Katala Foundation, Inc. (KFI) provided authorities and 850 Palawan households with emergency supplies and equipment after Typhoon Rai. This allowed them to recover quicker and continue protecting Palawan pangolin habitats from bushmeat poaching, which tends to increase during times of crisis. KFI is also educating communities about Palawan pangolin ecology and helping improve their livelihoods to encourage their participation in pangolin conservation efforts.
The Environmental Legal Assistance Center (ELAC) is collaborating with KFI to protect Palawan pangolins. With its PCF grant, ELAC is teaching Indigenous communities about land tenure and helping them secure legal rights to community land in northern Palawan. This will help secure the land for local people, pangolins, and other wildlife and help prevent it from being sold to extractive industries in the future.
By supporting the important work of its grantees, helping establish new protected areas, and increasing local communities’ participation in conservation, the Pangolin Crisis Fund is vigorously investing in stopping pangolin poaching. This will not only make the future safer for Critically Endangered pangolins, it will help ensure that they have a future at all.
The future of pangolins must be secured within the next 10 years to prevent them from disappearing forever. The Pangolin Crisis Fund is expanding its efforts to support conservationists and authorities on the frontlines of pangolin conservation so they can pursue wildlife criminals wherever they operate, safeguard pangolins and their dwindling habitats, and end the global demand for pangolin products.
You can help us save pangolins this #WorldPangolinDay by spreading the word on social media and supporting the Pangolin Crisis Fund. 100% of all donations to the PCF go directly to the field to protect pangolins and their habitats. Visit pangolincrisisfund.org/rollwithus/ to learn more or make a gift.
Thank you for supporting the Wildlife Conservation Network and the Pangolin Crisis Fund
