Known as guardians of the forest, because they protect the woodlands from termite destruction, pangolins are themselves facing extinction at the hands of traffickers, ALICK PONJE writes.
Anything of great value is being given the moniker of pangolin in Malawi.
A football player rises to stardom and he gets the epithet; a talented student beats multitudes in a spelling contest and she is a pangolin.
In essence, the term is being deployed to describe individuals who need ultimate protection, but there is an irony in the larger picture.
“While it may mean something is of phenomenal worth and must therefore be guarded, the nicknaming of brilliant people as pangolins also reminds traffickers that a huge price is attached to the animals,” environmental conservation activist Sinthani Mwase says.
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The shy scaly anteaters are credited for maintaining a balanced ecosystem. An adult pangolin weighing three kilogrammes can consume more than 300 grammes in one meal.
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But many of their species are on the critically endangered list of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
“Thanks to their big appetite, one pangolin can protect an area as large as 31 football fields from termite destruction,” global environmental organisation The Nature Conservancy says.
The non-profit organisation indicates that many Asian cultures incorrectly believe pangolins’ scales have medicinal and magical properties, causing a huge demand on the black market.
“Modern research has shown the main component of pangolin scales is beta keratin, similar to our fingernails, with no medicinal value,” the organisation says.
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Current reports indicate that poaching and wildlife trafficking is running rampant to fuel the illegal trade in wildlife and wildlife products, with an estimated value of up to $23 billion (approximately K24.2 trillion).
One of the animals most threatened by trafficking is the pangolin, conservation experts say.
And in Malawi, efforts to curb their poaching seem to be yielding minimal results.
While the country continues to register a drop in ordinary wildlife crime such as trafficking in ivory, illegal trading in pangolin continues to rise, reports say.
Arrests related to the scaly animals have been doubling in recent years, which implies traffickers on the prowl are still in the illegal trade.
Wildlife and Parks Director Brighton Kumchedwa states that there is a shift from ivory trafficking to pangolin trading.
Kumchedwa believes pangolins, native to Africa and Asia, are being targeted by traffickers because they are easy to conceal and are of high value in the Far East.
He says their demand is convincing people in search of quick fortunes to engage in the illegal trade.
In wildlife conservation, data is always crucial, experts say.
“The conservation management of iconic species is becoming increasingly data-driven, with large datasets from diverse fields such as genomics, veterinary science, spatial tracking and remote monitoring of individual activity using radio data networks.
“The ability to easily interrogate and visualise these data is now vital to optimise on-the-ground conservation work to continue population growth,” American interactive data visualisation software company Tableau says.
Currently, the population of pangolins in the wild in Malawi is not known.
However, Kumchedwa insists the illegal trafficking of the solitary, primarily nocturnal mammals “may not lead to their extinction”.
“This is because these animals are often traded live, so once rescued, they are put back into the wild,” he says.
But media reports point to numerous cases of dead pangolins being found in the hands of suspected poachers and traffickers.
On the other hand, Kumchedwa admits that the increase in pangolin trafficking in Malawi is not surprising, “considering recent research estimating that global pangolin populations have declined by 80 percent in the last 20 years”.
Last year, following the arrest of a Pakistan national linked to pangolin trafficking, Kumchedwa confirmed the presence of some foreign nationals who are fuelling the illegal trade in Malawi.
He said his department’s investigation unit, which is “helping quite a lot because it is largely intelligence led”, is slowing down trafficking of the protected animals just like it is doing with other wildlife crimes.
“Also, more than that is how the courts have indeed applied the law. They are giving custodial sentences. We are seeing people taken to jail for seven years for being found in possession of a pangolin,” he said.
But there are those who believe the punishments are still failing to curb the prevalence of the crime despite that the revised Wildlife Act prescribes jail terms of up to 30 years with no option of a fine.
A report by Lilongwe Wildlife Trust says the ground pangolin, the only pangolin species found in southern Africa, which also has Malawi as its range state, is being threatened with extinction.
Malawi Scotland Partnership (Masp), a network which supports and develops Malawi’s civil society links with Scotland, also admits that both local and international environmental organisations and the Malawi Government have been slow to fund pangolin research and rescue interventions.
Masp was commenting on continued arrests of people for being found in possession of live or dead pangolins.
“It was sad to note that two of the convicted persons in Mangochi District late last year… were not first-time offenders in wildlife-related crimes and both of them admitted to being part of one of Africa’s largest transnational wildlife trafficking syndicates,” the network said.
The kingpin of the trafficking network, China national Yunhua Lin, was also reportedly linked to a range of wildlife crimes including the possession and smuggling of processed elephant ivory, rhino horns, hippo teeth and pangolin scales.
He was later jailed for 14 years in September 2021 and is currently serving time.
It later transpired Lin was part of a 14-member wildlife trafficking gang nine of whom police had arrested. They all got convicted of wildlife crimes.
The conviction of the kingpins was billed to result in a decline in wildlife crimes because it was generally seen that the sentences were unprecedented.
“But cases of pangolin trafficking continue being reported and this is very concerning. We need to do more awareness about wrong beliefs some people have about the animals,” Mwase says.
United Nations Environmental Programme (Unep) says pangolin trafficking topped wildlife crimes in Malawi in 2019.
“Illegal wildlife trafficking is the fourth most lucrative global crime after drugs, humans and arms, and is directly contributing to the biodiversity emergency,” Unep says.
