We publish here the intro of The Pangolin Reports, a collaboration by the Global Environmental Reporting Collective, distributed under a CC license. Credit header picture: Ruslan Rugoals for the US Fish and Wildlife Services, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license.

The world’s most trafficked mammal is a solitary anteater resembling an artichoke: the pangolin. Prized for its scales, particularly for traditional medicine in China, this quiet animal is at the centre of a sophisticated, multi-million-dollar supply chain across Africa and Asia, run by networks of criminal syndicates.

The Global Environmental Reporting Collective, formed in early 2019, chose the pangolin trade as its first focus for in-depth investigation. More than 30 journalists from 14 newsrooms reported in Africa and Asia, conducting dozens of exclusive interviews and even going undercover. The results are being published here as The Pangolin Reports.

“Roughly 50 tons of illegal African pangolin scales have been seized globally in the last four months,” estimated Peter Knights, the CEO of WildAid, an advocacy group. “In shipments that contain both pangolins and ivory, pangolin scales have now surpassed the volume of ivory.”

High demand has made the pangolin the most illegally traded mammal in the world, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). All eight subspecies of the shy animal are threatened with extinction, scientists say. And when pangolins disappear, so does the ecological balance in their natural habitats.

“In the 21st century we really should not be eating species to extinction,” Jonathan Baillie, a leading expert, said in 2014. “There is simply no excuse for allowing this illegal trade to continue.” In the preceding decade, more than a million pangolins are believed to have been hunted, the IUCN estimated.