Fighting to save the world's most trafficked mammal
One by one, the cat-sized creature tore open the mounds dotting the veld, using his long sticky tongue to probe inside the insect tunnels as panicked black ants and red termites swarmed over his pine cone-like scales.
“Look how his tongue is getting right in there,” said Ray Jansen, the chairperson of the African Pangolin Working Group (APWG), with a grin. “He’s drinking them up.”
Happily, he watched Ivory glide across this small, secret patch of veld in Joburg, his scales rustling the grass.
“Look how beautiful he is,” Jansen enthused. “He’ll probably eat for three or four hours. When he’s full, he’ll just roll up and go to sleep.”
Jansen and his team named this pangolin Ivory because of where he was found: in Ivory Park. A few days earlier, working with the police, members of the working group had rescued the animal, likely destined for the lucrative scale trade in Chinatown, in a sting operation in the township in Midrand.
All eight species of pangolin, divided in half between Africa and Asia, are the world’s most trafficked wild animals. Nocturnal, elusive and obscure, the pangolin is often described as the “most trafficked animal you’ve never heard of”.
In the past decade, more than a million of these little-known animals have been hunted incessantly, snatched from their fast-shrinking Asian and African habitats to feed the insatiable demand for their scales and meat, mostly in China and Vietnam.
Jansen is wary of publicly disclosing what a single pangolin like this fetches on the black market because “it only fuels the fire”.
Ivory, he believes, was probably smuggled into Joburg from Zimbabwe. “We have a lot of foreign nationals trying to sell live pangolins, but the ironic thing is they phone us because we’re so well connected and we orchestrate the sting operation with the police We go in with Monopoly money and do the bust.”
Increasingly, local pangolins are being poached for the illicit Asian trade. “If you buy a pangolin here, what will you do with it? In the local traditional medicine market, you pay R1000 for a pangolin. People won’t pay that price (that poachers and middlemen demand). So, the animal either dies because they can’t sell it, which probably happens a lot, or they go to Chinatown, and there people do pay.”
Ivory’s captors likely soaked him in bleach to mask his scent.
“We think they washed him with a bleach solution because pangolin have a strong smell and he was absolutely clean, to try to mask the smell when he came through the border, because of the detection dogs,” explained Nicci Wright, executive director of the APWG. She also works as wildlife project manager for the Humane Society International-Africa and for the Johannesburg Wildlife Veterinary Hospital.
The volunteer-based APWG, a non-profit, was started in 2011 to better understand and safeguard “Africa’s arboreal artichokes” from extinction.
While domestic trade on the continent poses the biggest threat, the multi-billion dollar illegal international trade run by organised crime syndicates, is “likely to become the most significant threat to African pangolin species in the near future”, warns the APWG.
Last year, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites) outlawed all international trade of pangolin parts to give the mammals “a fighting chance”.
But earlier this month, as it declared pangolins a priority species for 2018, Cites acknowledged the epic scale of the continuing slaughter. “Pangolins, the most trafficked mammals in the world, are still facing serious threats from illegal trade, although international trade is banned,” it said, noting how its statement came as a record-breaking haul of scales from an estimated 20000 pangolins from Africa was intercepted on a shipping container at a Chinese port.
This week, new research by wildlife trade monitoring network, Traffic, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature, revealed an average of 20 tons of pangolins and their parts have been trafficked internationally every year with smugglers using 27 new global trade routes annually.
What worries Jansen, a professor in the department of environmental, water and earth sciences at the Tshwane University of Technology, is the precipitous link between the decline of Asia’s pangolins and the increased targeting of Africa’s pangolin populations.
This year, his team has seized more than 15 poached pangolins. “Those are only the ones we found. It’s double from the previous year. So there has been an exponential increase in SA.
“The four Asian species are well on their way out. They can’t source them any more so they come here for our African species ... There’s a huge amount of pangolin leaving the eastern seaboard of Africa.
“We have found some pangolin scales going into the Asian trade from South Africa, doing the rounds ... Rhinos, elephants and lions don’t come near the level of poaching of pangolins, although those species are also in trouble.
“We’re finding all four African species in the trade for traditional Chinese medicine. There are 60 different identified commercial products that contain pangolin as a remedy.”
Pangolin scales, which are made of keratin, the same material as human fingernails and rhino horn, have been used for thousands of years in traditional Chinese medicine to treat asthma, stimulate lactation and relieve palsy. Pangolin meat too is prized as a luxury item in the Far East.
Typically, according to Jansen, pangolins are being smuggled into South Africa from neighbouring countries such as Zimbabwe and Mozambique or locally sourced in the Limpopo bushveld.
Often the animals are carried in a sack for up to 10 days without food or water, while being taken to a potential buyer. “Sometimes, they’re fed pap and lettuce,” said Jansen.
By the time they’re confiscated, the pangolins are usually starving, dehydrated and in a compromised state. Then, there’s the stress of captivity.
It’s “easy to poach a pangolin” - all that’s needed is a sack, said Wright. “They walk in the veld and look for pangolin tracks leading to burrows. You can hear the pangolins in the bush as they move.
“At night, they sit and wait. Once they come out, they’re just picked up and put in the sack. There’s no violence, it’s not like rhino poaching. It’s just a person walking with a bag on your property and all he can be charged with is trespassing.”
Ivory was lucky. He was in better shape than the last pangolin, Benz, rescued from a Mercedes Benz in Hammanskraal in August.
“They’re all named after where we find them,” explained Wright.
Benz was discovered wrapped in wire, his scales covered with foot rot.
“He was kept in captivity for a long time, he was wet and couldn’t eat. And he didn’t like the ants in Gauteng,” said Karin Lourins, a wildlife vet studying pangolins.
After two weeks of rehabilitation, Wright drove him to a reserve in Thabazimbi, which has similar ant species to what he would be foraging on in Zimbabwe. “We’ve all become ant experts,” she smiled.
The team is now involved in a world-first: dogs are being trained to detect pangolin scent. “When we do a sting often there’s another pangolin in the house somewhere hidden, and that’s when we’ll send in the dogs. We’ll have two dogs permanently with us,”said Jansen.
Alexis Kriel, a director of the APWG, spends her time educating the police, magistrates and prosecutors about the cultural importance of pangolins in South Africa, and the scale of the ilicit trade. There are victories. In August, the first jail term was handed to Brian Mandebvu and Oliver Tambo, from Zimbabwe, in the Mankweng Magistrates Court, in Limpopo. Both pleaded guilty to poaching a pangolin and were given a three-year sentence without option of a fine. Jansen gave evidence in aggravation of sentencing.
This week, the Cullinan Stock Theft and Endangered Species Unit, said arrests were on the rise. “In one incident in August the members followed information about suspects trading pangolin in Mamelodi East and arrested five male suspects. Investigations led to two male suspects’ arrest for possession of a pangolin in the Joburg area.
“One was sentenced to a fine of R10000, suspended for four years, with the choice of two years’ imprisonment.”
But more could be done, said Jansen, who spent this week testifying in a pangolin case in Tzaneen. “Most poachers were given a fine of R10000, which is extremely weak. The law for poaching pangolin in South Africa is 10 years’ imprisonment or R1million fine, which is never imposed. Sickening. We have 22 cases on the court roll right now.”
Rob Bruyns, of the APWG, said uplifting impoverished rural communities in pangolin range states was key, as for many, “poaching is the simplest and fastest way to alleviate increasing economic pressure”.
Back in the veld, darkness had settled. Ivory, who was released days later, lay curled in Wright’s arms “The species is slipping through our fingers,” she said. Pangolins, with their armour, are almost invincible in nature. “Their only enemy is us.”