4. Strengthen public participation and reporting mechanism

To  work with local community residents and volunteers to build  community-type protected areas (Community Conservation Areas for  something at somewhere). China Biodiversity Conservation and Green  Development Foundation (CBCGDF) has extensive experience in this field:  CBCGDF has so far established more than 100 China Conservation Areas  (CCAfa) across China. CBCGDF can help local people in Nigeria to  establish partnerships with experts, NGOs, local governments, private  companies and other stakeholders to protect local rare species.

To  develop platforms and intelligent applications for reporting illegal  trade enables whistle-blowers to effectively report any suspected  illegal trade about pangolins; the reporting platform can also be  developed to promote knowledge about protecting endangered species such  as pangolins.

5.  Chinese enterprises calling for "going out" should take social  responsibility and educate employees working in Africa not to eat  endangered wild species such as pangolins.

Encourage  Chinese companies in Nigeria to donate to endangered species such as  pangolins, which will not only help to enhance the public image of  China's “going out” enterprises in Nigeria, but also increase the  knowledge about the importance of protecting the world's mammals suffer  the most from illegal trade worldwide.

6.    Strengthening cooperation in the field of scientific research

Scientific  research is carried out to investigate the origin, route and black  market of smuggled pangolins, to work with scientists and experts in the  field of pangolin to study programmes to protect pangolins, including  the protection of critical habitats, to develop more rapid methods to  detect the composition of pangolins in products, and to determine the  origin of pangolins.

7.    Organization of international forums

CBCGDF  is willing to co-host the annual “China-Africa Wildlife Conservation  Forum” with the locals and will set the protection of pangolins as the  theme of the forum.

VII. CBCGDF’s Initiative on World Earth Day in 2019: I am a human being, don't eat pangolin!

“We want to inform the public about the truth.” Dr. Zhou Jinfeng, the Secretary-General of China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation (CBCGDF) said. "There are two important truths, one is that the proprietary Chinese medicine of pangolin belongs to the bottom products medicine, the curative effect is very little." Read from the "Pharmacopoeia Chinensis", the description of pangolins is "This product is the scales of Manis pentadactyla Linnaeus", that is, the scales of the medicine must be the scales of Chinese pangolins. Any proprietary Chinese medicine that uses other pangolin scales is a pseudo-drug. However, in the year of 1995 or so, the Chinese pangolins have been declared 'commercial extinction' in China. This means that the pangolin scales used by Chinese medicine practitioners are not derived from the Chinese pangolins, but may originate from Africa and other places, and have no curative effect. Second, according to the Chinese Medicine Classics Theory of Medicinal Property: (Pangolin) is very toxic. This means that eating pangolin is not beneficial but harmful to health instead.

Protecting pangolins is everyone's obligation, so if there are people around you who buy and sell endangered wildlife products, what you can do is take the initiative to stop them, and explain the reasons to them, explain the harms of doing so to help them reject wild animal products. Everyone's efforts are a small part. At the same time, the state and the government also need to strengthen legal control and increase the punishment. At the same time, they should strengthen the advocacy of public opinion, and all relevant knowledge should be popularized from rural to urban areas. With more awareness of protection, there will be more protection actions. Because we are earth people, we don't eat pangolins!

(Photo credit: CBCGDF volunteer)

By / Niu Jingmei