Pangolins need world spotlight to survive

Reclusive, gentle and quick to roll up into a ball, pangolins keep a low profile.

But they are also the world’s most heavily trafficked mammal, and experts at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species conference this week are ringing alarm bells over their survival.

Demand for pangolin meat and body parts has fueled a bloodbath, and driven the scale-covered, ant-eating mammal toward extinction.

More than a million pangolins are thought to have been poached from the wild in the past decade.

At the CITES meeting in Johannesburg, conservationists will discuss moving pangolins into the highest protection category, which bans all international trade.

“There has been a massive surge in the illegal take of the pangolin for its meat and for its scales,” CITES chief John Scanlon said.

Currently, CITES allows trade in pangolins but under strict conditions.

“Existing laws are clearly failing to protect pangolins from the poachers. A complete international trade ban is needed now,” said Heather Sohl, WWF-UK’s wildlife adviser.

There are four species of pangolin in Africa and four in Asia.

Watchdogs say those in Asia are being eaten to extinction, while populations in Africa are declining fast. Research published in the early 2000s estimated populations in China to have declined by up to 94 percent, said Dan Challender, pangolin expert at the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Pangolins are covered in overlapping scales. When threatened, they curl into ball, making it easy for them to be captured.

About the size of a small dog, they are solitary, mostly nocturnal and cannot be farmed.

“Pangolins are notoriously difficult to keep in captivity — they only feed on wild ants and termites, and they are extremely prone to stress and dehydration, so they die,” said Ray Jansen of the African Pangolin Working Group.