Elisa Panjang, a conservation officer at the Danau Girang Conservation Center in Sabah, Malaysia, developed a strong bond with pangolins when she was a child living in a village on Borneo island. She specializes in the Sunda pangolin, a critically endangered species found only in Southeast Asia. One day, while playing outside her house, she spotted a brown, scaly animal she had never seen before.
She ran to tell her mother, who identified it as a pangolin, a species known for eating ants and having hard scales in the Malay language. Panjang was captivated by the strange appearance of the pangolin, and it quickly became her favorite animal. She has spent much of her academic career studying the Sunda pangolin, earning her undergraduate degree, Master's degree, and now working on her Ph.D. at Cardiff University.
However, despite her dedication to understanding the species, pangolins are facing a decline in the wild. All eight species of pangolins found in Africa and Asia are at risk, and despite international trade being banned since 2017, smuggling continues. In Southeast Asia, Sunda pangolins are often poached and smuggled to Vietnam and China, where their meat and scales are believed to have medicinal value.
Conservation Efforts on Pangolin
Since 2015, Elisa Panjang and other Sabah conservationists have advocated for stronger legal protection for the Sunda pangolin. Their efforts were successful on World Pangolin Day 2018 when the state government of Sabah upgraded the protection status of the Sunda pangolin to Schedule 1 of the Sabah Wildlife Conservation Enactment. This change made it illegal to hunt Sunda pangolins in the state, as it was only illegal to hunt them without a permit.
According to a study published by TRAFFIC, an international NGO that tracks wildlife trade, between 2010 and 2015, authorities in 67 countries confiscated approximately 47,000 whole pangolins and an additional 120 tons of pangolin parts. The study also found that smugglers are highly mobile, using over 150 different routes and adding 27 new ones yearly. Most pangolin parts end up in China. In November 2017, Chinese authorities seized 11.9 tons of pangolin scales at a port south of the country, which was believed to have come from around 20,000 pangolins in Africa.
Pangolins are also vulnerable to poaching due to their slow movement and large tails, which make them easy to catch. Sunda pangolins are solitary, elusive animals that are well-camouflaged in the forest due to their brown scales. They can also hide in burrows or move quickly through the trees. Elisa Panjang has only seen seven pangolins in the wild in her seven years of studying Sunda pangolins using camera traps, GPS tracking, and forest guides.
Given how difficult it is to spot pangolins in the wild, it's not surprising that poachers also have a hard time catching them. According to Panjang's ex-hunters, poachers use long nets (up to 100 meters) to snare pangolins on the forest floor. They only sell the pangolins after they have captured a large number.
Saving the 'Scaly'
In the past, locals in Malaysia would hunt Sunda pangolins for food. However, the demand for pangolins from Vietnam and China has changed this dynamic, and now hunting is driven by profit. In 2015, conservationists in Sabah, including Panjang, tried to have the Sunda pangolin classified as a fully protected species, but their proposal was rejected due to a lack of data on the number of wild Sunda pangolins in the region. Despite their efforts, the proposal was rejected multiple times because scientists had no effective way to find and count the elusive animals.
After several rejections, the conservationists changed tactics and focused on raising public awareness about the plight of Sunda pangolins. They held workshops, ran roadshows in schools and villages, and worked with the media to spread the word. As a result of these efforts, people's attitudes toward pangolins began to change. Panjang and her team started receiving calls from people who had found injured Sunda pangolins and wanted to rescue them. She also received a call from an ex-hunter who had found a pangolin in his orchard and chose to turn it over to her rather than sell it. Panjang was able to GPS-tag and released the pangolin.
Despite the success of public education and outreach efforts, Elisa Panjang believes that the most pressing needs for the Sunda pangolin are stronger enforcement and the establishment of rescue centers in all countries where the species is found. Pangolins are notoriously difficult to care for in captivity, and most do not survive more than six months. Therefore, rescue centers that can work together and provide protocols for caring for pangolins in captivity are a top priority. The IUCN Pangolin Specialist Group has determined that Sunda pangolins will go extinct in the wild if illegal poaching and trade are not stopped. Panjang believes that with continued research and cooperation between rescue centers, there is hope for improving the conservation status of Sunda pangolins within the next decade.
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