“Pangolin scales trafficked to China” -Gunasekara

A iring his concerns to the , former Deputy Director of Customs and founder of the Customs Biodiversity Protection Unit Samantha Gunasekara said that it’s illegal to retain any part of a pangolin as it is a protected species. “Therefore transportation or causing harm naturally becomes illegal under the FFPO. According to the CITES convention, the pangolin was included in the Appendix 1 among other species threatened with extinction. Therefore it essentially bans international trade of pangolins, their parts or derivatives. There’s a huge smuggling racket going on with pangolin scales and it has reached Sri Lanka as well. Over the past few years many people were caught attempting to smuggle pangolin scales out of the country. Although it was only found at the airport or the harbour, it eventually reached the interiors of the country and pangolin scales were found in areas such as

Beruwala as well. All pangolin scales are trafficked to China and with the influx of Chinese in the country, this becomes more evident. There’s a huge threat for other bio-matter such as red sandalwood, edible bird nests and wallapatta as well. Now that these scales are being caught, people crush them and smuggle, so that they cannot be identified. Since it’s a rarely seen animal its actual count is unknown. In addition to the Chinese local people also consume pangolin flesh and people sometimes rare pangolins at home. When taking all these factors into consideration,

pangolins have a dwindling population in Sri Lanka and worldwide,” explained Gunasekara. Several attempts to contact the Tong Ni BBQ restaurant and the Embassy of China proved futile.