For the past several years, videos of illegally captured and poached pangolins have been circulating on Facebook, YouTube, and Whatsapp, posted by wildlife traffickers hoping to advertise to buyers online. While this has generated negative press due to pangolins being cited as a potential source for COVID-19 and the fact that many videos show traders electrocuting or skinning these animals alive, most of the content still remains up on social media. At one point, Facebook was even allowing advertisements for poached animal body parts to proliferate. Sometimes dubbed “walking pinecones” or (inaccurately) “scaly anteaters,” pangolins are the most poached mammal in the world, with an estimated 300 being killed every day. As such, all eight species of pangolins have conservation statuses ranging from vulnerable to critically endangered. These shy animals are incredibly unique for their status as being the only mammals covered entirely by scales—scales that are valued highly as traditional medicine in both Africa and Asia and sold legally in countries like China. In 2016, the United Nations updated its Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to explicitly ban trafficking of all pangolins, yet illegal poaching in Western Africa and Asia remains a large threat to pangolin conservation. Still, not all hope is lost: over the past two years, many different technological and scientific approaches have been taken to try and ensure the survival of these “rollers.”

Tracking Areas of Poaching

The supply chain of pangolin tracking is incredibly complex—it is believed that between hunting and selling pangolins scales, there are several intermediary traders often based in Southeast Asia and parts of Africa involved. While seizures of literal tons of pangolin scales happen roughly one to two dozen times a year—the most recent being 2.294 tons confiscated just a few weeks ago—authorities haven’t been able to track the root of the supply chain. This is why, while 250,000 trafficked pangolins are intercepted annually, an estimated 400,000 to 2.7 million aren’t. But in 2023, a group of scientists began to do just that.

Credit: Science. Pangolin scales seizures across countries.

The UCLA scientists collected 500 unique DNA samples from wild pangolins across Africa, then used genomic analysis to see where poached pangolins had originally been hunted. While officials cite the location of the vast majority of pangolin scale seizures to be in Nigeria, the scientists found quite the opposite—while Nigeria is the primary shipping point, less than 5% of pangolins actually originate from the country. Instead, most pangolins came from Central African countries, implying that some intermediary trader is bringing them to Nigeria for convenient bulk shipping to Asia. 

Their research also shows where pangolin scales are traveling to within Asia—usually first arriving in very specific cities in East and Southeast Asia before being shipped to nearby cities to be sold. Given that scientists have many struggles in tracking pangolins (in fact, research suggests there may be a ninth species of pangolin called “manis mysteria,” but scholars don’t know where this pangolin lives), law enforcement focusing on poaching are often stretched thin, making it incredibly important that they be focused on preventing killings in the specific regions where they occur most.

Learning About Pangolin Movements

Tracking and monitoring pangolins would aid greatly in their conservation, as it would allow scientists and law enforcement alike to quickly glean information about pangolin hunting and, by extension, deter potential poachers. Additionally, understanding movement patterns and territories would help create more sophisticated conservation strategies that don’t yet exist today—like has been done with other animals, such as snow leopards. 

Over the past few years, scientists and conservationists have improved in GPS tracking for endangered pangolins as well as identifying certain ground burrows and placing cameras in front of them. Infrared cameras have recently been paired with AI, used to identify the animals that trigger the cameras. This is especially helpful for when scientists know pangolins live in a certain area but don’t have an exact location as to their burrow or whereabouts, as tracking pangolins is incredibly difficult otherwise. While it might take scientists years to manually parse through mounds of camera footage and identify species to learn about their movements, AI does this mundane task immediately. More than 70 of these AI-powered cameras have been put up over the past year, with many located in Uganda to help track pangolins.

Beyond simply studying the animals, around 30% of pangolins are still alive when their poachers are caught and can be returned to their native habitat. However, pangolins are highly territorial, so depending on their release spot, they may need to travel for days before reaching a good spot to burrow. Because these nocturnal creatures are exposed to heat stress from the sun and do little foraging for food while finding a new home, if dropped off too far from a suitable location the pangolins may starve. In some cases, just tracking released pangolins with radio or GPS requires extra human field work, traversing difficult terrain to find well-hidden burrows. So, conservationists in Vietnam have begun to use drones alongside GPS chips to ensure the pangolins were not traveling too much directly after release. Their work has helped them track the livelihood of the animals and better understand differences in the burrowing habits of male and female pangolins.

Similar work has been done in Namibia, where confiscated pangolins are tagged for GPS tracking upon release to observe centralized foraging patterns and get a sense of where other pangolins may be living. With the data they’ve gathered, conservationists have a better sense of the locations where pangolins should be released, giving the animals a much higher chance of survival. As a whole, these efforts will help scientists better understand pangolins’ habits and increase the number of pangolins thriving in their natural habitat.

Necessary conservation work is being done for pangolins, both in trying to identify root causes and locations for poaching as well as in helping previously poached pangolins reacclimate themselves to the wild via technology and research. However, despite this progress, much more needs to be done: research into pangolin movement and foraging habits should be continued to aid in conservation strategies, greater enforcement and implementation of anti-poaching laws should occur across Africa and Asia as per CITES, and certain cultural shifts (in wanting the meat and scales of pangolins) may also need to happen to prevent these animals from going extinct. Anti-poaching efforts have begun in earnest—now they must continue to roll forward.