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PAKISTAN FIGHTS TO SAVE THE ADORABLE AND ENDANGERED PANGOLIN
By Haniya Javed
THE DAILY DOSE
FEB 06 2019
On a Saturday afternoon in August 2018, 41-year-old Shaukat Akash was relaxing at his home in Taxila in Pakistan’s Punjab province when he heard people talking over each other in raised voices outside, followed by frequent thuds. Akash stepped outside to find a group of men armed with sticks and spades, standing in a circle and bent over a weird-looking scaly creature curled up in a ball in the middle.
Akash told the men to stop beating the animal, and unsure of what the creature was, decided to take it home for its safety. Members of Pakistan Wildlife Foundation (PWF), a nonprofit conservation group, identified the animal as a pangolin over the phone, based on Akash’s description. They took the creature. The next day, after it was observed fit for walking and digging into the earth despite a slight swelling on its right forelimb, it was released in Margalla Hills National Park in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital. It was a life-saving operation that Pakistan’s conservationists are now increasingly trying to replicate to protect the pangolin, identified by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) as the world’s most trafficked animal.
These cute creatures rarely survive run-ins with humans.
SOURCE SHUTTERSTOCK
Pangolins rarely make it out alive from human contact. Their body parts are smuggled to East Asia: the scales are used in Chinese medicine and the meat is considered an exquisite delicacy. Of its three main sub-species, the Chinese pangolin’s population has been in regular decline, down 94 percent over the past 60 years. The animal is described as “critically endangered” in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List.
The African variety’s risk status is at “vulnerable,” which is concerning but much less critical. But it is the Indian pangolin, native to Pakistan’s Pothohar Plateau and the part of Jammu and Kashmir governed by the country, that is suffering the swiftest decline. The population of this animal is down by 80 percent in just the past five years, according to the WWF.
More:
https://www.ozy.com/fast-forward/pakistan-fights-to-save-the-adorable-and-endangered-pangolin/91940
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