the southeast Asian pangolin trade

I frequently see reports on ASEAN-WEN and criticism levelled at it. TRAFFIC is involved in training and law enforcement improvement operations in wildlife trade in S.E. Asia. This move and awareness raising by the Sabah Dept. is to be applauded.

 

About 100 pangolins have been seized by Thai authorities, thought to originally have been caught in Malaysia or Indonesia, they are thought to have been destined for China or Vietnam.

Scores Of Endangered Pangolins Seized In Thailand (Photos)

 

A little bit of good news for pangolins: the IUCN just established a specialist group

http://portals.iucn.org/blog/2012/05/03/iucn-takes-on-scaly-anteaters/

 

400 boxes? That makes my blood boil.

 

Indeed. I may go for my entire life without ever seeing a pangolin in a zoo, much less the wild, yet these idiots are eating them like chickens. How sad.

How best bud, Nigel Marven, did a nice segment on pangolins in his China documentary. Unfortunately, I cannot find it online, but you might be able to.

 

Hopefully this is one challenge that Chlidonias doesn't rise to.

This really is awful though. I doubt its getting through to anyone though, as pangolins are one of those species that no-one knows, so it doesn't have the same impact as a story about tigers, elephants, rhinos, turtles, parrots, etc which are readily identifiable.

 

How does one catch so many? Surely they were bred en masse in captivity.

 

Hmmm..... If these guys had 2,000 and you never saw any in the wild, it suggests a few possibilities. I think you are quite good at spotting wildlife, so I suspect that this stash was accumulated over a very long time, or those guys are exceptional hunters. No wonder ex-hunters make great safari guides/wildlife spotters.

 

Pangolin is very hard to find in the wild, because it doesn't like most other wild mammals which travel along trails, ridges or riverbeds, instead, it moves along the hillside where is hard to locate a conspicuous trail. The hunters told me that the best way to find a pangolin is to find the ant or termite mounds first. I had help CI to conduct a rapid assessment program of pangolins in southwest China, but failed to find an pangolin, but some fresh tracks. The locals knew where to find the pangolins, but they were reluctant to show us, instead they only took us to see the abandoned pangolin holes. The locals told us, because pangolins were one of the most valuable game species in the area, if they told us, others would know those places and rushed to caught those pangolins at once, but they wanted to keep those pangolins alive and only caught them when necessary (that is, when they needed money). Every hunter had his own confidential pangolin population in the mountain and kept it as a secret.
Then for the case of Sunda pangolin, because in southeast Asia, especially in Indonesia, the plantation or paper company will burn out the primary rain forest before they plant their own trees, and when the forest are burn, all the animals inside will rush out, the pangolin is slow-moving, and will curl into a ball rather than run away when disturbed, thus is very easy to catch. So it is the reason why people can catch so many pangolins during a short time: they just burn the forest and force all the animals come out!
And my classmates are doing a research about the illegal pangolin trade in China, and they find several years ago, most pangolins in restaurants were Chinese pangolins, then recently most pangolins in Chinese restaurants became Sunda pangolins, because Chinese pangolins were hunted to nearly extinction, and then last year, they surprisingly found African pangolins in restaurants! And they believe the main reason was pangolins in southeast Asia became so endangered thus couldn't afford the black market need yet, and people began to hunt pangolins in Africa!
I hate the so-called "traditional food culture". When talk about pangolin affair, I always feel shame for my mother country.

 

baboon, I think you and your class mates have a task / workbook cut out for ye all! It would be nice to really raise awareness in China for pangolins too. I assume it is better now with tortoises and turtles and conservation initiatives exist now that where impossible before, not so with pangolins. Singapore Zoo is doing a good job with them...., why not captive-breeding is no option to conserve the species in captivity.