Meet the Pangolin
Pangolins are known as the guardians of the forest, helping to protect against termite destruction. As small as they appear, an adult pangolin weighing 6.6 pounds can consume more than 0.66 pounds of termites in one meal. Thanks to their big appetite, one pangolin can protect an area as large as 31 football fields (41 acres) from termite destruction.
Of the eight pangolins species, four are found in Asia and four in Africa. They are the world’s only scaly mammals—a pangolin’s scales weigh approximately 20% of its total mass. These solid scales provide the animal with protection. When threatened, pangolins will quickly curl up into a tight ball. By tucking its face under its tail, the overlapping scales serve as a tough armor.
Unfortunately, this armor also puts pangolins at risk of poaching.
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Protecting the Pangolin
These little guardians have survived thousands of years of natural changes, but now they are on the verge of extinction due to habitat loss and illegal poaching. The incorrect belief that their scales have medicinal and magical properties results in a huge demand on the black market. More than 1 million pangolins were brutally murdered for black-market trade in the past 10 years; that is 11 pangolins every hour. All eight species of pangolin are listed under Appendix I (threatened with extinction) in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITIES).
Public efforts to prevent poaching of pangolins in China are gaining traction, such as this PSA featuring Jackie Chan, produced through a partnership between WildAid and The Nature Conservancy.
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