In Response to the Questions from a Freelance Journalist in Pakistan
2019/6/11 13:22:00 本站

Questions:

 

The pangolin in Pakistan has been killed and smuggled to China because of its scales, used in traditional Chinese medicines, the scales, however, are so strong that they are used to make crude bulletproof jackets as well.

 

What is the current status of pangolin trade from various countries to China particularly from Pakistan?

 

What are the reasons for the Indian Pangolin declining population as poaching is done and sold to Chinese people through middlemen, the influx of Chinese in Pakistan is due to multi-billion dollars economic corridor?

 

Are there any gaps and flaws in wildlife laws in Pakistan? Need recent findings of the research and surveys in Asia particularly in Pakistan to add in my story for Deutsche Welle English.

 

Answers from China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation (CBCGDF):

 

At present, there are only 8 species of pangolins in the world. Among them, Pakistan is one of the traditional distribution areas of Indian pangolins. Although pangolins are protected by the country's federal and Provincial Wildlife laws, they are rapidly declining due to illegal wildlife international trade. It's reported that Pangolin numbers have gone down by 80 percent in five years in Pakistan. [1] Some other media reports review that Pakistan is an important exporter of pangolins. As a port metropolis, Karachi plays the role of a transit station in some reported cases.

 

We don't know about the exact current status of pangolin trade from various countries to China particularly from Pakistan; nor if pangolins in Pakistan have been killed and smuggled to China as you mentioned.

 

Yet, what we know from media reports and data released by Customs is that: a large number of pangolins and pangolin products have been confiscated every year. Where were they from? Where were they heading to? Over the past four years, we have been looking for answers to these questions. We found a very strange phenomenon: domestically, although we have Wildlife Protection Law, pangolins are almost functionally extinct in the past decades, which means domestic supply can't support the huge market demand; Internationally, whenever living pangolins are confiscated by the Customs, those animals will be sent to officially established Wildlife Rescue Stations affiliated to Forestry Departments, but those trafficked mammals have never been returned back to nature in the past years. At the same time, we have sent teams to southern China's provinces to conduct black market trade investigations and surprisingly found that many restaurants were selling pangolins as the meal. These phenomena made us feel very confused.

 

The China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation (CBCGDF) is a leading NGO dedicated to biodiversity conservation. Anti-poaching and anti-illegal wildlife trade are our important tasks. In Aug 2017, We learned from media reports that 34 pangolins were sent to the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region Terrestrial Wildlife Rescue Research and Epidemic Disease Monitoring Center after the Customs confiscated them. We wanted to help and were turned down. Later, ALL the pangolins died within two months. We sued the Rescue Center.We began to investigate and found that this Center has received large numbers of confiscated pangolins every year, but never returned a single pangolin to the wild. We also found that this Center had transported tens of dozens of confiscated pangolins to unrelated entities - say, a steel company - in the name of "Domestication & Breeding"...  They're many reports about the story

 

We believe that:

 

1. Wildlife is not the property of some individual institutions, and the people have the right to supervise it. The smuggling and illegal trade of pangolins have brought huge benefits to a small number of people over the past few years. You may have heard that China advocates the construction of Ecological Civilization, which is great and we support it with all our strength. The efforts of the whole country towards a more sustainable future should not be hindered by a small number of people and small interest groups. Over the past few years, the CBCGDF has made continuous efforts to protect public environmental interests, including through Environmental Public Interest Litigation. This series of holistic measures has strongly promoted the transparency of China's wildlife rescue system today.

 

The Environmental Public Interest Litigation (EPIL) filed by the CBCGDF for the protection of pangolins has been listed as the Top Ten Public Interest Litigations in China in 2018. It also reflects that the concept of Ecological Civilization and Biodiversity Conservation have been widely supported and recognized.

 

2. Protecting pangolins requires the joint efforts of all countries in the world. The demonstration effect is very important. We advocate that the penalized pangolin scales should be destroyed to send a clear signal to the world.

 

3. Traditional medicine, no matter which country it belongs to, must be science-based and be in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations.