Wang Yan
While conservationists in China try to rescue and breed the shy creature, the booming trade in pangolin scales for traditional medicine is pushing it to the brink
Xiao Chen (left) and her colleague at Jinhua Wildlife Rescue Centre, along with two rescued Chinese pangolins, Rou Rou and Tuan Tuan (Image: Meng Haifeng /Jinhua Wildlife Rescue Centre)
Ranger Lu Hanrong pointed to an evergreen tree. “I was on patrol, when
something round fell off the slope onto the dirt road in front of me.
Before I recognised it as a pangolin, it started to move slowly to the
other side of the road and climbed up that tree looking for termites.”
Lu was speaking to a captivated group of visitors to a remote forest
reserve – Shiwan Dashan (a Hundred Thousand Mountains) – in Guangxi
Zhuang Autonomous Region near the Chinese border with Vietnam.
He held up his phone, which had a blurry photo of the reclusive and
highly endangered mammal, which he had taken in April 2018. The
visitors, local forestry bureau staff, an animal scientist and a member
of a domestic NGO dedicated to pangolin preservation were excited to
hear Lu’s tale, since their mission, in late February, was to find a
suitable natural habitat to rewild pangolins.
“This is the first time a wild pangolin was found in Guangxi in recent
years as far as I know. It’s almost never seen in the wild in China now.
We tried to explore the area to find any burrows of that living
pangolin, but we ran out of time,” said Zhang Siyuan from the China
Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation (CBCGDF), a
domestic non-profit public foundation. “We can tell this is an ideal
habitat for pangolins: thick soil, proper forest coverage. And most
importantly plenty of ants and termites to meet the species’ unique
dietary needs but not much human activity to disturb them,” he said.
Two pangolins at the rescue centre in Zhejiang (Image: Meng Haifeng, Jinhua Wildlife Rescue Centre)
Overexploitation
All eight species of pangolins found in Asia and Africa are listed as “endangered” or worse on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. The Chinese pangolin (Manis pentadactyla),
once prevalent in most parts of southern China, was classified as
“critically endangered” in 2014 due to overconsumption for medicinal
purposes.
In the 1960s, 170,000-180,000 pangolins were captured annually in China,
according to statistics collected by CBCGDF. By the late 1990s, the
annual catch was only a few hundred kilograms. Official statistics
indicate the average annual consumption of pangolin scales was around
26.6 tonnes between 2008 through to 2015.
In reality the species, often described by wildlife NGOs as the most
trafficked animal in the world, is on the verge of disappearing in the
wild in China. According to the IUCN, in the decade up to 2014, more
than one million pangolins across the globe were poached and illegally
traded to satisfy demand from consumers in Asia, particularly China. The
crisis led to pangolin species being moved in 2016 from Appendix II to
Appendix I of CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered
Species of Wild Fauna and Flora), which indicates the species is
threatened with extinction and is prohibited from any form of
international commercial trade. China has ratified this treaty.
Medicinal use poorly regulated
Pangolins are reclusive mammals with protective keratin scales covering
their skin and long, sticky tongues that enable them to eat ants and
termites. Throughout history, pangolin scales have been used in
traditional Chinese medicine. “Roast pangolin scales are used, combined
with other traditional material, to promote blood circulation, dispel
clotting or swelling, and it is used more often on women who want to
stimulate lactation after giving birth or on people who suffer from
cancer,” said Sun Xiuqing, a senior traditional Chinese medicine doctor
at Jingshun hospital in Beijing.
The sale and purchase of pangolins is prohibited under China’s Wild
Animal Protection Law, except if used for scientific research, captive
breeding, exhibition or other special purposes, such as in traditional
Chinese medicine.
In 2007, the then State Forestry Administration (SFA, now National
Forest and Grasslands Administration) established a special marking
system to regulate the medicinal use. The system limits the legal use of
pangolin scales to verified stockpiles from the SFA or other legal
sources in licensed hospitals and authorised pharmaceutical companies.
Sun admitted that with the tightening control and regulation, as well as
the increasing price of pangolin scales, doctors use them less often.
“There are some alternative substitutes for pangolin scales though the
medicinal effects are not comparable,” said Shi Yu, another doctor from
Jingshun hospital. “But the doctors in our hospital are aware of the
protected status of the animal, so we rarely prescribe them.”
Pangolin scales, like rhino horn, in fact have no proven medicinal value.
“According to chemical analysis, the main component of pangolin scales
is keratin, similar to human fingernails. As each capsule contains such a
small amount of pangolin scales, it is difficult to see that it has any
medicinal effect,” stated a CBCGDF report on the overexploitation of
pangolins published in July 2016.
At a conservation event organised by WildAid in Hong Kong in September
2018, some traditional Chinese medicine experts urged the use of
alternatives.
“Many herbal medicines have very similar functions to pangolin scales,”
said Lao Lixing, director of Hong Kong University’s School of Chinese
Medicine, the South China Morning Post reported.
Lao listed six substitutes including cowherb seeds and earthworms which
can be used to treat certain conditions instead of pangolin scales.
Legal cover for black market
Zhang Mingxia, an assistant researcher from Xishuangbanna Tropical
Botanical Garden, said that legal pangolin scale products should be
packaged with an official logo of a deer head. “If pangolin scales are
not packaged when they’re sold, then it’s illegal for sure,” Zhang said.
However, during research carried out by NewsChina on the
availability of pangolin scales, both at traditional Chinese medicine
pharmacies and on e-commerce websites, packs of scales without the
official logo were readily available.
At a branch of Tong Ren Tang, a major producer of traditional Chinese
medicine, a pack of scales with the official logo was retailing for 180
yuan (US$27). Powdered scales are more expensive, costing 420 yuan
(US$63) for 21 grams. But three retailers on e-commerce site Taobao,
operated by Alibaba Group, offered unpackaged pangolin scales for around
five yuan (US$0.5) per gram, almost certainly illegal.
A packet of pangolin scales sells for 180 yuan (USD$27) at a Tong Ren Tang outlet in Beijing, March 1, 2019 (Image: Wang Yan)
A pharmacist called Zhu from Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang province,
disclosed to the reporter that hospitals purchase pangolin scales from
authorised medicine wholesalers, but due to lack of regulation,
wholesalers often mix illegally sourced pangolin parts with legal ones.
“A huge quantity of the sold pangolin scales are illegal, since
wholesalers can easily mix legal scales with trafficked pangolin parts
to escape supervision,” said Zhou Jinfeng, secretary-general of CBCGDF.
Indeed, since 2016 the Chinese government has not published data on
pangolin scale quotas. The national legal stockpile of pangolin scales
also remains a mystery. The National Forest and Grasslands
Administration (NFGA) did not respond to NewsChina’s inquiry on
the current status of stockpiles of pangolin scales and the annual
allocated consumption quotas. Instead, the NFGA only stated in a vague
written response that it vows to “continue its efforts in the
registration of live pangolins and scale stockpiles.”
“A well-managed stockpile system would effectively prohibit the sale of
illegal pangolin scales, but now it is clear that the NFGA does not have
control over the stockpile, so it cannot give us any statistics on
that,” Zhou said.
Meanwhile, international trafficking of pangolins continues. In 2018
alone, according to the CBCGDF, authorities seized 38.14 tonnes of
illegally traded pangolin scales from six domestic custom offices,
including Shenzhen, Nanning, Shanghai, Jiangmen, Guangdong and Hong
Kong, which means at least some 60,000 pangolins were killed.
An updated version of China’s Wildlife Protection Law in 2017 clearly
prohibits consumption of pangolin meat and the sale of illegally sourced
scales. Yet wildlife authorities are in a constant battle to crackdown
on the trade in pangolins.
In late 2018, police from Central China’s Hunan Province identified a
large pangolin trafficking ring involving over 200 suspects after a
year-long investigation. According to the Hunan Provincial Forestry
Bureau, “The pangolins were trafficked into Guangxi from overseas, and
then sold to suspects in Guangzhou province, from where they were
distributed to other parts of China.” Arrests were made in six southern
provinces. According to China’s Wildlife Protection Law, people involved
in the trade in endangered wild animals face more than 10 years in
prison, plus fines.
Captive breeding
(To be continued.)
Original news article:
https://chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/11275-The-plight-of-the-pangolin-in-China