A Sunda pangolin, not putting up much of a fight (Image: Stephen Hogg/WWF Malaysia)

An unprecedented haul of records from wildlife smugglers in Borneo has revealed the scale of the illegal trade in pangolins. They show that between May 2007 and December 2008, the smugglers bought at least 22,200 endangered Sunda pangolins, or spiny anteaters, and nearly a tonne of their scales, for export.

By contrast, local police seized only 654 illegally shipped pangolins between 2001 and 2008. A report on the smugglers’ records from Traffic, the group that monitors wildlife trade for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), says that this “raises serious concerns for the continued survival of the species”.

“Most of what we know about the trafficking of pangolins is from seizures, and it has always been recognised that this is probably the tip of the iceberg,” says Elizabeth John, a Traffic spokesperson in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The smugglers’ records reveal the size of the iceberg. “This is why these logbooks are so valuable. It shows you what enforcement agencies are grappling with.”


Pangolins, the only scaled mammal known, are prized for their scales: according to Chinese traditional medicine, they boost circulation and treat a plethora of illnesses including asthma, menstrual and lactation disorders, and arthritis. “Scales are ground into a powder or worn like a locket, as a talisman,” says John. The animal’s meat is also supposed to have medicinal properties.

Endangered exports

Populations of all eight pangolin species are decreasing. CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, has banned exports of all four Asian species since 2000; two, the Chinese pangolin and the Sunda pangolin, were listed as endangered in the IUCN’s Red List in 2008, making all international trade in them or their parts illegal.

Yet Traffic reports that Chinese demand has made pangolins among the most common illegally traded wildlife in Asia, while shipments of African pangolins, until now spared this pressure, have recently been seized in China. China was also the probable destination of the pangolins listed in the smugglers’ records.

Traffic says wildlife officials in the Malaysian state of Sabah, where the records were seized, have too little money even to fuel their patrol boats to pursue smuggling vessels.

Meanwhile, hunters told Traffic that it is very difficult for them to stop hunting, because catching the animals is so easy – its only defence is to curl into a scaly ball – and because they sell for around $160 per animal. The smugglers recorded spending $3.4 million – $5700 per day – for pangolins in the seized records. Their profits were not recorded, but Traffic says they were probably “quite high”.