Scale up efforts to save pangolin

Illegal trade pushing the protected species ever closer to extinction
Fanny Lai, Straits Times 27 Sep 08;

I LIVED in Changi Village in the early 1960s.

Every day after school, I walked past a traditional Chinese medicine hall with row upon row of dried herbs, horns, tiger claws, exotic animal parts and, most noticeably, a stuffed pangolin.

It is known as the chuan shan jia in Chinese, an armoured animal capable of burrowing through mountains.

As a child, I imagined that this animal was the reincarnation of a soldier, clothed in an impenetrable armour shield.

My interest in the pangolin was re-ignited when I joined Wildlife Reserves Singapore (WRS) in 2004. I was surprised that such a charismatic animal still existed in the wild in urban Singapore, and the Singapore Zoo rescues, rehabilitates and releases a few pangolins each year.

Unlike orangutans, tigers, hornbills and elephants, it is not a high-profile species, although it is also endangered.

Like other anteaters, the pangolin is toothless, but its 25cm tongue is the longest among mammals. It has an enormous salivary gland in its chest to lubricate its tongue with sticky ant-catching saliva.

The pangolin has a voracious appetite, eating approximately 200,000 ants per meal, or more than 70 million ants and termites each year.

It is also a master of defence. When threatened, it rolls into a ball with its tail covering the belly and head, so that only its razor-sharp scales are exposed. It can even emit smelly acid.

But it is no match for humans.

Pangolins used to be plentiful in South-east Asia and China, but their numbers have plummeted as their scales are used in traditional remedies to treat a host of conditions like rheumatism, liver and stomach ailments and skin diseases.

In reality, pangolin scales are made of keratin, the same material as human hair and fingernails. Consuming the ground-up scales has as much medicinal benefit as biting your own fingernails.

In southern China, pangolin meat is a popular restaurant delicacy, despite a worldwide ban on its trade.

The wild population of the Chinese pangolin is less than one-tenth of its population of 200,000 a decade ago.

The trade relies on illegal imports from South-east Asia. All specimens are caught wild as there is no known commercial captive breeding facility in the world.

Before the pangolin reaches the dinner table, it would have gone through at least seven pairs of hands. Starting from the poacher in South-east Asia who gets an average of US$3 (S$4.30) per kg, the animals pass through various middlemen, with many of them being force-fed to artificially increase their weight.

By the time the animal ends up on the dining table, it could be priced at around US$160 per kg. But the 'delicacy' is, in reality, unhealthy meat that has gone through a series of criminal channels.

In July, the WRS hosted a pangolin workshop together with Traffic - the wildlife trade monitoring network - to discuss the plight of pangolins in Asia. An action plan to prevent the illegal trading of pangolins was drafted. Enforcement agencies have agreed to take pro-active measures in their respective countries and work closely as a regional team.

There have been some successes.

Last month, Indonesian enforcement officers raided the warehouse of an illegal wildlife trader in South Sumatra, uncovering 14 tonnes of Malay pangolins. The raid is linked to two earlier operations by the Vietnamese Customs authorities that uncovered over 23 tonnes of pangolin meat, or approximately 3,000 pangolins.

Eight illegal traders also stood trial in China's Yunnan province on the charge of smuggling over 20 tonnes of pangolin scales worth US$2.9 million.

But this may be a case of too little, too late. Despite receiving full protection under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, the pangolin continues to be pushed closer to extinction each year by illegal trade.

More must be done if we are to save it. The Singapore Zoo has started a joint project with the National University of Singapore to study the habitats and food preferences of the remaining 50 Malayan pangolins living in our nature reserves. And it is making pangolin conservation a subject in its 'Zoo Goes To School' programme - a talk show that reaches out to 50,000 students annually.

At the Night Safari, a new pangolin exhibit will be opened by the end of the year to educate visitors on this nocturnal species.

Hopefully, the people who grow to know and love this creature will stop buying its products, for this is the only way it can avoid extinction.

The writer is group CEO of Wildlife Reserves Singapore.

Scaly mammal

# There are eight pangolin species worldwide, four in Africa and four in Asia.

# The Malayan pangolin is a Singapore native. The average adult is 75cm to 1m long, (including its 30cm tail), and weighs 5kg to 7kg. There are only about 50 left in forest reserves here.

# The name 'pangolin' comes from the Malay word peng-guling which refers to its habit of rolling up. It rolls up 80 per cent of the time to conserve energy, as well as to protect itself from danger.

# The pangolin is the only scaly mammal in South-east Asia, with its overlapping scales that act as armour and camouflage. Often mistaken as a reptile because of its scaly covering.

# It is a solitary nocturnal animal which actively forages for up to four hours outside its burrow between sunset and midnight. Its long, tubular snout gives it an excellent sense of smell to detect ants and termites. It also has good hearing to compensate for poor eyesight.

# Its formidable front claws are large and strong for breaking open ant and termite nests, but impractical for walking. So it walks on its forepaws or knuckles in a rather clumsy manner.

# According to Malay folklore, this tiny creature is capable of killing an elephant by coiling itself around the trunk.