43August5, 2019An illicit global trade is
endangering a rare mammal
whose defensive maneuver
makes it especially vulnerable to
poaching. By Matthew Campbell
Photograph by Olivier Laude
OF
INJUSTICE
In November, customs agents at Hong Kong International
Airport spotted something unusual as they X-rayed the bag-
gage of a Chinese man who’d just arrived from Ethiopia. They
toldthepassenger,44-year-oldLinJin-Bao,he’dhavetoopen
hissuitcasesbeforebeingallowedtoboarda ferrytohisnext
destination,Macau.Inside,theagentsfound 24 tightly packed
aluminum foil pouches. Each was filled with hundreds of mot-
tled,brownish-redflakes—someshapedlikejaggedcircles,oth-
ersresemblingtinyspades.
Linwasswiftlyarrested.Thesuitcasescontained 48 kilo-
grams(106pounds) of pangolin scales, a once-obscure com-
modity that’s become wearily familiar to law enforcement
agencies in Asian hubs. The pangolin, one of the only scaly
mammals known to science, looks a little like a large gecko
crossed with an artichoke. It’s now believed to be among the
world’s most trafficked animals, the victim of aggressive poach-
ing operations set up to serve demand for its scales, which are
considered by some practitioners of Chinese and Vietnamese
traditional medicine to have healing properties, and its meat—a
status symbol in Vietnam.
Lin, whose cargo had an estimated street value of
HK$189,000 ($24,100), pleaded guilty to importing a protected
wildlife product without a license and received a 20-month jail
sentence. He was small fry in an illicit industry that might be
worth billions of dollars, but rare for being convicted. In April
customsofficersata Singaporeportterminalinspecteda ship-
pingcontainerpurportedlyfulloffrozenbeeffromNigeriaand
foundjustunder 13 tons of scales, with a value they estimated
at about $39 million. Less than a week later they pulled a sim-
ilarlysizedhaulfroma containerthatwassupposedtocon-
tainseedsfromthecassiaplant.Thatmanyscaleswouldhave
likelyrequiredthedeathsofsome21,000pangolins.
Trafficking experts point out with alarm that these seizures
are indicative of an enormous global trade along a sophisti-
cated network, reaching from poachers in Central Africa to
smugglers in Nigeria to middlemen across Asia to consum-
ers in China and Vietnam. Even optimistic wildlife activists
concede that they’re late to the problem. Until recently, they
tended to focus on contraband from what are known in con-
servation circles as charismatic megafauna: species, such as
elephants and rhinos, whose photogenic quality and sym-
bolic import make drumming up public support and donor
dollars comparatively easy. Only in the past decade did the
rise in pangolin trafficking become apparent—a consequence
of rising prosperity in consuming countries and, perhaps,A rescued
pangolin at
Save Vietnam’s
Wildlifein
CucPhuong
NationalPark