Poaching is sending the shy, elusive pangolin to its doom
With his tail stretched out parallel to the ground for balance, Tamuda holds his little arms in front of him like a T. rex.
The caretaker gently guides the young pangolin toward a dirt mound that he starts to break apart with a pick. Look, he encourages Tamuda: ants. Tamuda catches on and begins to eat, his nearly body-length tongue searching the crevices, his long claws mimicking the pick.
After a few minutes of eating, it’s time to move on. Tamuda lumbers a little farther. The caretaker shows him a new ant mound. This time the pangolin isn’t interested. He flops on his side like a toddler about to throw a tantrum. He curls his body around the boot of the caretaker, who bends down and gently tries to peel him off, but Tamuda wants attention.
Looking up into his human’s face, he reaches high, begging to be picked up. The caretaker tries to be strict—he’s supposed to be teaching Tamuda how to fend for himself—but the plea is too much to resist. As any good pangolin mother would do, he lifts Tamuda up and cradles him.
Tamuda’s lesson was taking place at the Tikki Hywood Foundation, a rescue center near Harare, Zimbabwe, where pangolins freed from the illegal wildlife trade by Lisa Hywood and her team recover.
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Tamuda and his mother came to the rescue center in early 2017. A Zimbabwe border patrol officer caught a man from Mozambique trying to cross into the country with them in a sack. According to the wildlife trade monitoring organization Traffic, an estimated one million pangolins were poached from 2000 through 2013—mainly for their scales, used in traditional medicine. Pangolins are believed to be the most heavily trafficked nonhuman mammal in the world.
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All eight species of pangolins, four in Africa and four in Asia, are in danger of extinction driven by the illegal trade. That’s why Tamuda’s caregiver isn’t being named. He and Hywood worry that if traders know the identities of the caregivers, they might be targeted by criminals who want access to the rescued animals.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2019/06/pangolins-poached-for-scales-used-in-chinese-medicine/?cmpid=org=ngp::mc=crm-email::src=ngp::cmp=Editorial::add=Animals_20190516::rid=594148660
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