CBCGDF Team Arrived at Guangdong Wildlife Center for Pangolin Workshop
2019/4/21 16:18:00 本站

In the morning of 16 April, CBCGDF Pangolin working group and its veterinarian volunteers arrived at Guangdong Wildlife Center for the workshop on pangolin rescue.

 

On 25 March, the Guangdong Wildlife Center received 21 living pangolins and 5 frozen pangolins. After hearing the news, CBCGDF started to reach out to international experts and to recruit veterinarian volunteers in support of the rescue.

 

Captive breeding is an important way to protect these species, but because of pangolin's specialized behaviors and high dependence on the natural ecosystem, there still exist many technical barriers to successful captive breeding programs. Wild pangolin population is being exhausted due to some Chinese and Vietnamese cultures. In 2007, International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) and Conservation International (CI) adjusted Chinese Pangolin and Malayan Pangolin from low-risk (LR) level to endangered (EN) level.

 

With the acute decline of wild populations, captive breeding becomes an important way to protect pangolins from extinction; however, there still exist many technical barriers for the captive breeding programs because of pangolin’s specialized behavior and dependence on natural ecosystems. According to literature, over the past 150 years, more than 100 zoos or organizations have attempted to maintain pangolins. However, most captive pangolins died within six months, although some were held for two to three years, a few cases lived for 12–19 years. 


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(Photo credit: CBCGDF)


By / Cathelina Modified by / Niu Jingmei