Africa Wild

Scales tip in favour of pangolins as hosts of Coronavirus ‘transition’

By Don Pinnock and Tiara Walters• 25 March 2020

As the Covid-19 pandemic spreads its tentacles across all continents except Antarctica, scientists in China and the US are racing to pin down its biological origins. Mounting findings across the globe highlight the world’s most trafficked mammal as the likely pandemic carrier.

A new paper by four Chinese researchers says the acute pneumonia that has killed almost 20,000 people worldwide (so far) almost undoubtedly recombined in pangolins before eventually jumping to humans.

Suggesting firm transmission links from bats to humans via pangolins, the research was released last week on bioRxiv (pronounced “bio archive”), a web discussion forum for unpublished preprints in the life sciences. This service is a widely used industry gold standard that allows the scientific community to immediately see and comment on findings before these are submitted for the rigorous and often lengthy peer-review process.

SARS-CoV-2, the single-strand RNA virus that causes Covid-19, is a likely recombinant between bat and pangolin coronaviruses, and pangolins are “the most possible intermediate reservoir”, the joint research team has found. Together they represent Hainan University, Fujian Normal University, Central South University and Pilot National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology.

Coronaviruses can infect a wide range of animals, including humans, and have caused major epidemics in the past.

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome via civets caused a global outbreak in 2003, followed by Middle East Respiratory Syndrome via camels in 2012. Each is a coronavirus transmitted through intermediate mammal hosts with original links to bats.

Likely entering people through meat consumption, these coronaviruses transformed their hosts into brand-new vectors and were then spread by human contact.

Ha! Bats! Or is it?

To determine the mammal linkages to SARS-CoV-2 — the seventh species of coronavirus to infect humans — researchers Jiao-Mei Huang, Syed Sajid Jan, Xiaobin Wei, Yi Wan and Songying Ouyang analysed genomes from various potential hosts.

The team’s initial results are consistent with an escalating body of recent evidence exposing bats as the original “reservoir” source of the virus, but stress that pangolins appear to reflect a slightly higher resonance in some key aspects.

Coming out on top for whole-genome similarity, a bat coronavirus genome is 96% similar to SARS-CoV-2, while pangolin coronavirus shows a 90% similarity, the team points out.

In genetic terms, this difference is not insignificant. So let’s, for a second, pretend these data points are our only genetic clues to what sort of animals the pandemic strain may have hijacked before infecting humans.

At such a crime scene, we would be forgiven for punching the air and exclaiming, “Ha! It’s bats!”

But the Chinese virology detectives wanted just that extra bit of certainty, and knew the value of taking a high-resolution look at the “S-protein” cauliflower stalks peppered across the coronavirus’s ball-like surface.

This is where we might get really suspicious of bats, because the S-protein is crucial for viral infection and, in bats, it is up to 97.43% similar to the S-protein observed in SARS-CoV-2, the paper found. (We’re not saying ‘S’ means suspicious at all — Ed.)

That is right. A bat’s whole coronavirus genome is a 96% match to the latest human coronavirus genome. Plus, bat coronavirus has a seriously suspicious S-protein that seems to be an even higher match to its human equivalent. This suggests the SARS-CoV-2 spillover event to humans happened via bats.

However, our virology sleuths were not content to leave it there and rush into the court of academia, waving nothing but a body of batty evidence. They would be crummy RNA investigators if they did.

For it is in a terminus of the S-protein cauliflower stalks that the Chinese team probed deeper — that’s because most coronaviruses hide some of their most lethal arsenal right here, in the “receptor-binding domain”, or “RBD”, and its associated amino acid residues.

Think of the RBD and its amino acid accomplices as Trojan soldiers whose most desirous existential mission is to infiltrate what they might, in the cross-examination dock, describe as a “Troy” cell*. For argument’s sake, that Troy cell is, potentially, your cells, or another mammal’s cells. But different RBDs like to hijack different cells — meaning they don’t have a universal entry code to unlock every safe.

To unlock the safe, they need to have evolved the correct amino acid entry code.

How, according to the Chinese paper, does the RBD entry code in bat coronavirus compare with the SARS-CoV-2 variety found in humans?

“Um, it’s only about 89.57% similar, advocate,” SARS-CoV-2 might quiver in its little viral boots if questioned about how it broke into Patient Zero’s Troy cell.

And how about a pangolin coronavirus? “At least 96%.”

That’s the humdinger. The RBD and its amino acids in pangolin coronavirus is more than 96% similar to its SARS-CoV-2 counterparts.

Pangolins as a ‘missing link’

This does not mean pangolins, also known as scaly anteaters, are the final link in the chain that mutated into SARS-CoV-2 and has upended the entire human world — especially since the pangolin coronavirus’s whole genome comparison does not seem to exceed 90%.

Instead, the Chinese paper said the complex dance between whole genome, S-protein, RBD and amino acids suggests bat and pangolin viruses at some point shared genetic material within the RBD and recombined to form the virus that became SARS-CoV-2.

Due to the high RBD/amino-acid correlation, the paper also suggested that the pangolin is the “most possible intermediate SARS-CoV-2 reservoir, which may have given rise to cross-species transmission to humans”.

Following “mutations in coding regions of 125 SARS-CoV-2 genomes”, the researchers also attempted to track the virus’s evolution.

“Another important outcome of our analysis is the genetic mutations and evolution of SARS-CoV-2 as it spread globally. These findings are very significant for controlling the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic,” they proposed.

‘Identical to that of a pangolin coronavirus’

The Chinese researchers’ work strongly supports earlier preliminary findings by a US team at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas.

In February, Daily Maverick was the first publication globally to report that the US team had homed in on the critically endangered Malayan pangolin (Manis javanica) as a likely intermediate reservoir of SARS-CoV-2.

Bioinformatics researcher Matthew Wong had found that the distinctive RBD docking mechanism in SARS-CoV-2 was “identical to that of a pangolin coronavirus”, his Baylor College lab supervisor, Professor Joseph Petrosino, told Daily Maverick.

A pangolin virus and bat virus may have found themselves in the same animal, he said, leading to what he described as a “devastating recombination event, creating the pandemic strain. This may have happened in the wild, or where these animals were brought together in unnaturally close proximity.”

Now being prepared for peer review, their analysis is based on a 2019 study of 21 Malayan pangolins — an especially popular species among traffickers — at a wildlife rescue centre in China’s Guangdong province.

The original research on the Guangdong pangolins was the first report on pangolins’ viral diversity.

Nonetheless, Petrosino was scientifically cautious — pangolins aren’t necessarily the closest link to humans.

“We do not know the order, or even where, the recombination events took place — whether it was in a bat, or a pangolin, or even whether there were other animals involved in the process that have yet to be discovered,” he said.

In January authorities had isolated SARS-CoV-2 in environmental samples from an unsanitary wildlife market in the Chinese city of Wuhan, but these results did not mean there were pangolins at the market.

For their part, there was only one thing Petrosino and his colleagues could say for certain.

“A virus known to exist in bats and a virus found in a pangolin-virus sample appeared to have recombined to form [SARS-CoV-2]. But, some viruses can be transmitted between mammals relatively easily, so there’s no way to tell whether there is another animal where these two viruses perhaps co-existed. More surveillance is necessary.”

Research gathers global momentum

Announced on the same day that Daily Maverick reported on the Baylor College findings, additional preliminary findings by a team of 26 researchers from South China Agricultural University had also found correlations between pangolin and SARS-CoV-2 RBDs.

This university’s detailed findings, posted on the bioRxiv forum on 20 February, made global headlines but have been challenged by some scientists.

However, since Baylor College emerged as the first academic team to share their seminal comparison study on bioRxiv on 13 February, at least 11 additional independent Australian, Chinese and US studies exploring pangolins as possible intermediate carriers have been made public on this very forum.

At the time of writing, the Baylor College and South China Agricultural University preprints had soared to the 99th percentile of some 15 million research outputs ever monitored by the forum’s global “attention tracker”.

And the other preprints — none of which were peer-reviewed when posted to the forum — generally agree:

- Pangolin coronaviruses appear to be genetic kin of both SARS-CoV-2 and bat coronaviruses.

- Since pangolin RBDs seem most closely related to SARS-CoV-2, this suggests not only a recombination event between pangolins and bats at some point during the virus’s evolution, but that pangolins may be more infectious to humans than bats.

- Bats still appear to be the original reservoir host, but pangolins are the likeliest intermediate vector yet.

In their conclusions, all preprints urged further research.

“Indeed, the discovery of viruses in pangolins suggests there is a wide diversity of coronaviruses still to be sampled in wildlife, some of which may be directly involved in the emergence of [SARS-CoV-2],” said researchers in yet another bioRxiv study, this time by Chinese and Australian institutions.

The preprints made other pointed recommendations, such as introducing urgent mechanisms to end wildlife trade; removing pangolins from wet markets to halt zoonotic transfer; and extensively monitoring pangolin virology.

“Large surveillance of coronaviruses in pangolins,” recommended another study by Chinese and US institutions, “could improve our understanding of the spectrum of coronaviruses in pangolins.”

Big academia weigh in: it is NOT biological warfare

Wild and unsubstantiated conspiracy rumours have been floated about the genesis of the virus, including that it escaped from a Wuhan laboratory — but a paper published in Nature Medicine last week thoroughly debunked this.

As a peer-reviewed paper in one of the world’s most respected journals, it also added authority to the hypothesis of pangolins as a likely intermediate vector.

The paper, by Australian, UK and US institutions, attributed the virus origins to zoonotic transfer from an animal, possibly arising in the Rhinolophus affinis bat and then spilling over into a pangolin.

“It is possible that a progenitor of SARS-CoV-2 jumped into humans,” they report, “acquiring the genomic features described above through adaptation during undetected human-to-human transmission. Once acquired, these adaptations would enable the pandemic to take off.”

Will pangolins come and save us?

“In the midst of the global Covid-19 public-health emergency,” the Nature study offered, “it is reasonable to wonder why the origins of the pandemic matter.”

But they do matter.

“The trade in and consumption of wild animals is not only an animal welfare issue, it’s a human rights travesty as attested by a pandemic that has brought the world to its knees,” said Audrey Delsink, wildlife director at Humane Society International in Africa.

“Detailed understanding of how an animal virus jumped species boundaries to infect humans so productively will help in the prevention of future zoonotic events,” the Nature study concluded. “If SARS-CoV-2 pre-adapted in another animal species, then there is the risk of future re-emergence events.”

Peter Knights of international conservation organisation WildAid warned that pangolins, among the world’s most endangered and trafficked mammals, are highly pathogenic.

“Whether or not Covid-19 is found to have been transmitted through pangolins, it certainly could have been — and, if current levels of illegal trade continue, they could be a vector for another new disease. Pangolins have high pathogen loads and carry parasites, like ticks. They are also massively stressed, malnourished and dehydrated when in trade,” said Knights, who in recent years has had success working with the Chinese government to reduce the consumption of shark-fin soup by a reported 80%.

Scientists may have mapped only a fraction of wildlife viruses, which have co-evolved in a staggering variety of insects and animals — not just pangolins and bats.

The majority of known emerging infectious diseases — especially viruses — are of animal origin, said a Royal Society paper by scientists from Cambridge University, London’s Zoological Society and EcoHealth Alliance. The proportion of those emerging from wildlife hosts, they noted, increased substantially over the 20th century’s last four decades.

This underlined the urgency of redrawing the architecture of medical science to join holistic dots between public health, non-human life, the hidden costs of economic development and degraded ecosystems, which biodiversity scientists warn are a hotbed for emerging infectious diseases. Our relatively poor understanding of the extent of disease in wildlife shows that the virology-research vessel may have hit only the tip of the iceberg and, to conservationists like Knights, this makes the trajectory of emergency response obvious, not just in China, but in other key regions of the human planet.

“All governments with bushmeat and wildlife consumption primarily in South East Asia and West and Central Africa should review their legislation, penalties, enforcement efforts and public awareness of the risks at this time. All live wildlife markets should be closed around the world,” he urged.

It seems African governments may be following suit. Last week the Nyasa Times reported that Malawi would ban the sale and consumption of bushmeat. A mass Covid-19 “sensitisation” campaign would follow.

Knights cautioned: “It’s obvious that some species should not be allowed to be consumed at all, while there may be some ‘safe’ species: like rabbits, quail, some deer and antelope and grasscutters.

“As we add species of conservation concern or health risk, the banned list gets longer and longer. Instead, we should be looking at a short ‘clean’ list of animals that can be legally consumed and enforced, and the public [will] know that everything else is off limits.” DM

* “Troy cell” is used metaphorically to illustrate an example. It’s not meant to be used or interpreted as a scientific term.

Gabon bans eating of pangolin and bats amid pandemic



Gabon’s government on Friday banned the sale and eating of bats and pangolins, which are suspected of sparking the novel coronavirus in China where they are highly prized in traditional medicine.







Pangolins are critically endangered and have long been protected, but they are sold in the markets of the capital Libreville and their meat is popular | © AFP/File | ROSLAN RAHMAN


Libreville (AFP) | 3 April 2020 18:39

The novel coronavirus is believed to have come from bats, but researchers think it might have spread to humans via another mammal.

Pangolins are critically endangered and have long been protected, but they are sold in the markets of the capital Libreville, as are bats, and their meat is popular.

The central African nation is 88 percent covered in forest and hunting and bush meat have long been a way of life.

The water and forest ministry said the novel coronavirus was a “combination of two different viruses, one close to bats and the other closer to pangolins”, and claimed to be quoting a scientific study published in Nature.

Gabon has declared 21 COVID-19 infections, but none from animals, the ministry said.

“A similar decision was taken by the authorities when our country was affected by the Ebola virus — a ban on eating primates,” forestry minister Lee White said.

The national parks agency ANPN announced in mid-March that tourists would no longer be allowed to interact with great apes to avoid any risk of contamination by the coronavirus.

The pangolin, the world’s most heavily trafficked mammal, also called the scaly anteater, is believed to have possibly been a vector in the leap of the novel coronavirus from animal to human at a market in China’s Wuhan city last year.

Its body parts fetch a high price on the black market as they are commonly used in traditional Chinese medicine, although scientists say they have no therapeutic value.

Gabon has also put in place a raft of measures such as grounding international flights, closing schools and ordering a night curfew to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

© 2020 AFP

https://lowvelder.co.za/afp/960607/gabo ... -pandemic/

The non-consumption of bushmeat will last until the scare of the virus has passed

China removes pangolin from traditional medicine list

09.06.2020 - AFP


The pangolin is considered the most trafficked animal on the planet. Roslan Rahman, AFP

- China has remove pangolin from its traditional medicine list

- The pangolin is thought by some scientists to be the possible host of the novel coronavirus

- Its body parts fetch a high price on the black market

China has removed pangolin parts from its official list of traditional medicines, state media reported on Tuesday, days after increasing legal protections on the endangered animal.

Pangolins were left out of the official Chinese Pharmacopoeia this year, along with substances including a pill formulated with bat faeces, the state-owned Health Times reported.

The pangolin, the world's most heavily trafficked mammal, is thought by some scientists to be the possible host of the novel coronavirus that emerged at a market in China's Wuhan city last year.

Its body parts fetch a high price on the black market as they are commonly used in traditional Chinese medicine, although scientists say they have no therapeutic value.

China's forestry authority on Friday gave pangolins the highest level of protection in the country due to its threatened status.

"Depleted wild resources" are being withdrawn from the Pharmacopoeia, Health Times reported, although the exact reason for the removal of pangolins was unclear.

China has in recent months banned the sale of wild animals for food, citing the risk of diseases spreading to humans, but the trade remains legal for other purposes -- including research and traditional medicine.

The World Wide Fund for Nature on Saturday said it "strongly welcomed" China's move to upgrade protections for the pangolin, calling it an "important respite" from the illegal pangolin trade.

Now we

Watershed for pangolins as China wipes scales off medicine list

By Don Pinnock and Tiara Walters• 11 June 2020



‘Most significant conservation action decision ever made for entire pangolin order’, shows a new era of conservation commitment.

Shortly after raising the status of pangolins to the top level of protection, the Chinese government this week removed the highly trafficked mammal’s scales from its official list of traditional medicines.

Conservation organisations have hailed the move as a breakthrough moment for pangolins worldwide.


In the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak, China banned eating wild terrestrial animals, but there were exemptions, in that they could be used for medicine or fur. With widespread use of pangolins in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), the ban was not a reprieve for the scaly anteaters.

Sun Quanhui, a scientist from the World Animal Protection Index, told the state-run Global Times: “There is no scientific evidence in modern medicine to show that pangolin scales have certain therapeutic or health benefits.”

“This is an absolute turning point in the conservation of the most trafficked and traded mammal on our planet,” Professor Ray Jansen, chairman of the African Pangolin Working Group, told Daily Maverick.

If China enforces the TCM removal, it could be a game-changer in attempts to shut down the massive poaching of the animal in both Africa and Asia.

In February 2020, Daily Maverick broke the story linking pangolins as the likeliest vector of Covid-19 via bats to humans. Researchers at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, found the “genome of a coronavirus whose receptor gene in pangolins matched the pandemic strain nearly 100% — pointing to the likelihood that the bat virus and pangolin virus at some point were in the same animal and had the chance to share genetic material … leading to the hybridisation [recombination] event that resulted in the pandemic strain”.


A pangolin in the wild. (Photo: Gallo Images)

As a “first class” protected animal, pangolins now share the status of giant pandas, Tibetan antelopes and red-crowned cranes. Presently, all eight pangolin species are endangered in their respective countries and regions. They’re massively poached and trafficked through airlines and shipping.

“This is an absolute turning point in the conservation of the most trafficked and traded mammal on our planet,” Professor Ray Jansen, chairman of the African Pangolin Working Group, told Daily Maverick.

According to Jansen, in recent months “three successive decisions by the Chinese government have led to a turnaround” in the animal’s survival.

Firstly, the Chinese public were “unable to claim on medical expenses if they purchased a medical product that contained any form of pangolin derivatives, such as bones or scales”.


Benson Lee, group head of the Marine Enforcement Hong Kong Customs and Excise Department, holds up endangered pangolin scales seized during an anti-smuggling operation, at Hong Kong customs in Kwai Chung, Hong Kong, China, 31 October 2013. (Photo: EPA/ALEX HOFFORD)

The second was uplisting pangolins to China’s highest species-protection schedule. “Banning pangolins and pangolin derivatives from TCM” was the third watershed moment.

“It culminates in what I can consider the most significant conservation action decision ever made for the entire pangolin order, Pholidota,” said Jansen.

Provided the regulations were strictly enforced, he added, they were “likely to have such a significant impact on pangolin populations that they may now well recover from what was certainly an extinction crisis for all pangolins. We commend the Chinese government in this milestone decision…”

Humane Society International’s Dr Peter J Li, a China policy specialist, said there would always be violations of the law, but that the government’s latest move legally equipped the public and activists “to go after the violators”.

Li noted that activists in China had been campaigning for scale removal from medicine lists for years. The decision was also part of government efforts to remove possible pandemic sources — “a political determination we did not see back in 2003”.

Yet Li was at pains to point out that “wildlife consumption has never been demanded by the people in China”.

Instead, “‘consumer demand’ for wild animal meat was made by traders for making money. I grew up in China and never once did my mother worry about not having wild animal meat to eat. We never ate snakes, pangolin meat, rats, bamboo rats and civet cats. … Wildlife traders in China have helped spread falsehoods about Chinese food culture in the world, thus helping perpetuate foreign misperception of Chinese food culture, Chinese people and Chinese culture as a whole.”

According to conservation group WildAid, as many as 200,000 pangolins are consumed each year in Asia for their scales and meat. More than 130 tonnes of scales, live and dead animals were seized in trafficking busts during 2019 — a figure estimated to represent up to 400,000 animals.


The head of ports and maritime command of customs, Chan Tsz-tat, speaks next to seized ivory tusks, pangolins scales and dried shark fins during a press presentation at Kwai Chung Customhouse in Hong Kong, China, 05 September 2018. (Photo: EPA-EFE/JEROME FAVRE)

The celebrity-supported conservation group has since February 2020 run a global campaign warning about the disease risks of eating pangolins. This includes the social media video featuring megastar Jay Chou, which amassed more than half a billion views in eight weeks.

WildAid CEO Peter Knights said this latest decision to remove pangolin scales, “coupled with last week’s move to upgrade pangolins to class 1 protection in China, is probably the greatest single measure that could have been taken to save pangolins. It closes the biggest loophole … We can now focus on making any type of pangolin consumption socially unacceptable around the world to protect the animals, our own health and our economies.”

US research group C4ADS, a Washington DC-based think tank that monitors illicit wildlife, drug and corruption networks, found that transit routes for pangolins followed that of ivory and rhino horn.

In West Africa, trafficking routes ran from Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea to China, Laos and Vietnam. Kenya, Ethiopia and South Sudan were often mere transit countries of pangolin products from West Africa. These, in turn, were shipped via Indian Ocean ports, also conduits for ground pangolins from southern and East African semi-arid grasslands. DM

Did China really ban the pangolin trade? Not quite, investigators say

by Elizabeth Claire Alberts on 24 June 2020

- Investigators have cast doubt on a recent announcement that China had banned pangolin scales in traditional Chinese medicine, based on the discovery that pangolin scales are still in the ingredient lists of various patent medicines cataloged in China’s 2020 pharmacopeia.

- At least eight of the listed patent medicines contain pangolin scales, including a blood circulation pill and a remedy for abdominal pain.

- Experts say pangolin scales are still being legally traded in China based on a loophole in the country’s Wildlife Protection Law, which allows the trade of protected species in special circumstances.

- There are also concerns about how the current stockpiles of pangolin scales will be used and managed to prevent laundering of illegal pangolin scales.

In early June, it was widely reported that the Chinese government had banned pangolin scales in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), and that all pangolin species now had the highest level of protection within China. This news grabbed headlines around the world, and conservationists hailed the move as a positive step toward halting the illegal trade of pangolins. But some experts say this celebration was premature.

The team at the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) recently obtained a copy of China’s 2020 pharmacopeia, a reference book for TCM practitioners, and found that while pangolin scales had been removed from the list of raw ingredients, pangolin scales were still listed as a key ingredient in various patent medicines.


Cover of the 2020 edition of China’s TCM pharmacopeia. Image by EIA.

“We were not surprised to learn that pangolin scales remained in the 2020 pharmacopeia,” Chris Hamley, senior pangolin campaigner at EIA, told Mongabay. “In fact we had warned soon after the reports started to appear in the international media on 9 June that China’s widely publicized pangolin protections might not mean a total ban on their use in traditional Chinese medicine. This has happened before with leopard bone and bear bile — both were removed as a key ingredient but maintained as ingredients in patent medicine formulations.”

EIA identified eight medicines in the 2020 pharmacopeia that contain pangolin scales, including Zaizao Wan, a pill said to aid blood circulation, and Awei Huapi Gao, a medicine used to treat abdominal pain. While patent medicines are processed, ready-made products, Hamley said that licensed hospitals and pharmaceutical companies can legally obtain pangolin scales to produce and sell these medicines.

There are also 72 additional TCM products containing pangolin scales that aren’t listed in the 2020 pharmacopeia, but that can still be legally sold within China, Hamley said.


A page from China’s 2020 pharmacopeia that shows a list of approved ingredients for the patent medicine, Awei Huapi Gao. The characters circled read “pangolin.” Image by EIA.

Hamley says the trade may be continuing based on an exemption in Article 27 of China’s Wildlife Protection Law, which specifies that protected wildlife can be sold, purchased and utilized for scientific research, captive breeding, public exhibition or performances, heritage conservation, and other special purposes.

“There are unlikely to be any major changes in demand for pangolin scales,” Hamley said. “The drivers of demand associated with the use of pangolin scales in TCM in China still remain. With licensed companies and hospitals still able to legally produce TCM medicines containing pangolin scales based on formulae in the pharmacopeia and other national lists, there will continue to be demand for raw pangolin scales from the TCM industry.”

EIA isn’t the only organization to point out the contradictory nature of China’s policy on pangolin scales. TRAFFIC, an NGO that monitors the illegal trade of wild animals and plants, also said pangolin scales were still being promoted as medicinal ingredients.


Another page from China’s 2020 pharmacopoeia that shows approved ingredients for the patent medicine, Zaizao Wan. The characters circled in green refers to vinegar-processed pangolin, and those in red mean leopard bone. Image by EIA.

“The situation is not clear-cut — medicinal use of pangolins is no longer endorsed by the main text of the TCM pharmacopoeia, but pangolin scales are still included in some of the prescriptions listed in the Annex of the printed publication,” TRAFFIC wrote in a tweet to BBC News after it published an article on China’s removal of pangolins from TCM.

There are also concerns about the current government-held stockpiles of pangolin scales, which can be legally used at approximately 700 licensed hospitals and to produce about 70 patented medicines, according to TRAFFIC. Between 2008 and 2015, about 26.6 tons of pangolin scales were used each year. However, it’s not known how many scales are currently in these stockpiles, or the exact source of these stockpiles, and conservationists are worried that pangolin scales will be illegally laundered into these stockpiles if the system isn’t properly managed.

“[A]t the very least, every province needs to have a transparent and standardized system to manage pangolin stockpiles to prevent any laundering of illegally sourced pangolin parts into legal channels,” Richard Thomas of TRAFFIC told Mongabay. “As we have seen in recent years, a number of very large-scale pangolin seizures have been made by Chinese customs, so clearly there is ongoing illegal supply of pangolin products that needs to be shut down. There’s a clear need for wildlife protection management departments to co-operate with the traditional Chinese medicine sector to eliminate potential illegal and unsustainable use of pangolin products.”


A bag of pangolin scales seized in Medan, Sumatra. Image by Paul Hilton for WCS-Indonesia.

The eight species of pangolins are the most widely trafficked animal in the world, with more than a million of these animals poached and illegally traded since the year 2000. In 2016, CITES, an international treaty that protects endangered plants and animals, uplisted pangolins to Appendix I, which bans all international trade. However, CITES regulations do not apply to any domestic trade of the species.

Hamley said the illegal trade of pangolin scales has not slowed down in recent weeks, despite the apparent removal of pangolin scales from pharmacopoeia.

“EIA is currently monitoring the trans-national trafficking of pangolin scales by criminal networks, and we can confirm that large, multiple ton shipments of pangolin scales continue to be trafficked from Africa to southeast Asia for onward shipment into China,” Hamley said. “COVID-19 has had some logistical consequences that have slowed down wildlife trafficking activity, but traffickers in Africa continue to source pangolin scales in significant quantities for export to Asia.”

‘It’s a success’: Pangolins return to a region where they were once extinct

by Elizabeth Claire Alberts on 23 June 2020

- pangolins have been “ecologically extinct” in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province Africa for the past 30 or 40 years, but a new program managed by the African Pangolin Working Group is reintroducing the scaly anteaters back into this region.

- Pangolins rescued from the illegal wildlife trade tend to be physically ill and mentally stressed, and need to go through a lengthy rehabilitation process before they can be released.

- Instead of simply releasing pangolins back into the wild, the African Pangolin Working Group puts the animals through a “soft release” program, and continues to closely monitor them through GPS satellite and VHF radio tracking tags.

- In 2019, seven pangolins were released at Phinda Private Game Reserve in KwaZulu-Natal; two died of natural causes, but the remaining five are doing well.

Pangolins have been locally extinct in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province for the last 30 or 40 years, experts say. But now, local conservationists are working to slowly reintroduce these shy, sensitive animals in a world-first effort to reinstate wild populations.

The eight species of pangolins together are considered to be one of the most widely trafficked animals in the world, despite the trade being prohibited under CITES. Due to the trade’s illegality, poachers and smugglers work hard to avoid detection, but authorities still manage to intercept thousands of these trafficked animals and their body parts each year. In 2019 alone, authorities seized more than 97 tons of scales from more than 150,000 African pangolins, according to the African Pangolin Working Group, although this is believed to only represent a small fraction of the trade originating from Africa.


A Temminck’s pangolin. Image by Francois Meyer.

Historically, the pangolin trade has been fueled by traditional Chinese medicine, which values pangolin scales for their medicinal qualities, despite the fact that they only contain keratin, the same substance found in human hair and fingernails. However, China recently banned the trade of pangolins within the country, which may help stop, or at least stall, the global trade of the species. Pangolins are also hunted and traded for their meat, which is considered to be a delicacy in some countries, including many African nations.

The Temminck’s pangolin (Smutsia temminckii), also known as the ground pangolin, has a wide range across Africa, but is considered “ecologically extinct” across KwaZulu-Natal, the easternmost province in South Africa, according to Ray Jansen, an advisory authority on the species for the IUCN. While an “odd pangolin” might reside in some northern parts of the province, he told Mongabay, the population as a whole is not viable.

The loss of the species in the KwaZulu-Natal is mainly due to pangolin poaching and trafficking, although Temminck’s pangolins are also commonly electrocuted by the fences separating parks, nature reserves and private properties.


A pangolin sticking out its long tongue. Image by Francois Meyer.

For the last 10 years, the team at the African Pangolin Working Group (APWG) have been rescuing pangolins from the trade, and rehabilitating them so they can eventually be released back into the wild in South Africa. But it was only in 2019 that the team started reintroducing pangolins into the KwaZulu-Natal province, where they’ve been ecologically extinct.

“They’re all pretty much in a very bad way when they come out of the trade,” said Jansen, who chairs the APWG. “They don’t feed in captivity, so they’re generally quite emaciated and dehydrated and extremely stressed.”

The first stop for these rescued pangolins is Johannesburg Wildlife Veterinary Hospital, a nonprofit facility that only treats wildlife. In most cases, the pangolins need antibiotics to help ward off illnesses that they picked up while being trafficked, Jansen said. If they survive this process, they’re placed in what he calls a “soft release” program.

“We found that this soft facilitated release is far more successful than simply opening a cage door and letting the animal go,” Jansen said. “We’ve seen it with other wildlife as well. When you transport and transpose other animals like lions and buffaloes and elephants, you first need to put them into a boma [corral] firstly to feed them there for a couple of weeks, get them accustomed to the habitat, the food, the environment, the sights, the sounds. Pangolins are no different.”


A Temminck’s pangolin resting in a burrow. Image by Francois Meyer.

During the soft release period, caretakers will take the pangolins for long walks in the reserve to ensure they can find enough ants and termites to eat, then take them back to a secure shelter to sleep.

“We have to go and physically walk behind them for anywhere from four to seven hours every single evening so that they can forage,” Jansen said. “It requires a huge amount of effort and manpower.”

The soft release program may only take days or up to three weeks, depending on the animal’s ability to adapt to its surroundings, Jansen said. When they’re eventually released, caretakers continue to observe them through GPS satellite-based and VHF radio-based tracking tags. They also regularly weigh the pangolins and give them medical checkups.

In 2019, the team rescued 43 pangolins from the trade and reintroduced seven into the Phinda Private Game Reserve in KwaZulu-Natal province. Phinda was an ideal release site because of its large size and the “good team on the ground,” Jansen said.


A reintroduced pangolin being observed at Phinda. Image by Phinda Private Game Reserve / &beyond.

“Out of the seven we’ve released on Phinda, one individual got a very large tick infection and got biliary and died, and another individual … swam across a large river then was taken by a crocodile,” Jansen said. “But these are natural deaths that aren’t related to the trade.”

The other five pangolins are “doing well,” Simon Naylor, manager of the Phinda Private Game Reserve, told Mongabay.

“They’ve found food, they’ve found burrows, and they’ve survived the full 12 months of summer and winter, and they’re still here … and this is a success,” Naylor said. However, he added that the ultimate measure of success would be when the pangolins started to reproduce.

One of the five pangolins is a young male named Rampfy who was picked up on the side of the road near Kruger National Park in 2018, and hand-raised by a number of individuals.


A reintroduced pangolin at Phinda in South Africa. Image by Phinda Private Game Reserve / &beyond.

“This little male is quite special,” Naylor said. “No [Temminck’s] pangolin has ever been hand-raised and released back into the wild, and he’s been out in the wild since November and doing very well. I think it just shows that with a lot of efforts, we can successfully hand-raise and release these animals, and give them a second chance.”

There are plans to reintroduce more pangolins into the Phinda Private Game Reserve, Naylor said. In fact, they’re expecting another pangolin to arrive shortly.

“I think this is a very special project, and no one knew how it would turn out,” Naylor said. “They’re very stressed animals when they arrive here, and it’s been a lot of hard work … very late nights, long hours. We’ve put a lot of funding towards it, with the monitoring, especially. But I think for the species, it bodes well — we’ve managed to show that we can successfully reintroduce these animals.”

You can see them at Phinda on the wildearth daily broadcasts!