At the symposium on protection and rescues for pangolins held in Changsha, Hunan Province on August 2nd, China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation (CBCGDF) discussed with experts and representatives of wildlife rescue stations in various provinces and cities about the distribution of Malayan pangolins.

In response to Kun Minggui's claim that "the Station specimens were taken from forest police, and that, in those days, smuggling was rampant," CBCGDF asked "whether it all came from forest police" and said, after investigated on more than 80 specimen cards by CBCGDF, the fact is only a few came from the forest police, Kun Minggui corrected the earlier statement. He said that not all specimens came from the forest police. CBCGDF believes that regardless of whether the Malayan pangolins are derived from forest police, it is not enough to prove that they are not native species; even the pangolins specimen from the forest police may be found locally.

According to the survey conducted by CBCGDF's “Pangolins' Counting Year” project, the pangolins provided by forest police did not necessarily originate from the pangolins seized by the customs. In many cases, they were picked by the locals and were handed over to the forest police. Or illegal transactions in the local territory were seized by the forest police. Therefore, the specimens of the pangolins of the research institutes are from the forest police and cannot provide evidence that Malayan pangolin does not belong to native species.

Although this symposium didn’t reach an agreement on the idea that Malayan pangolin is a native species in China, CBCGDF said that this will not affect the reaching of the consensus about the immediate initiation of the process for the immediate return of seized pangolins to the countries of origin, and the rescuing approach using is close to the field domesticated environment, or the implementation of the rescue with additional semi-wild domestication conditions in a fixed area.

(The above is based on the content of the live speech, without the speaker himself verifying.)

Original Chinese article:

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/3l5PhC9RLWuLDSXhagF3_w

By / Maggie