A suspect in the transmission of Covid-19 to humans, pangolins are the most trafficked animal in the world despite the ban on trade by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES). Currently on the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), pangolins are armadillo-looking mammals found in Asia and Africa but are more closely related to cats and dogs. Humans hunt them for their scales used in traditional medicine and the fashion industry and for their meat, which is considered a delicacy. Asian pangolins have become critically endangered, and poachers have turned to trafficking African species, most destined for China and Vietnam. According to TRAFFIC, a leading non-governmental organization working on wildlife trade, twenty tons of pangolins are trafficked each year, putting them on the fast track to extinction. 

Mayibout 2 is not a healthy place. The 150 or so people who live in the village, which sits on the south bank of the Ivindo River, deep in the great Minkebe forest in northern Gabon, are used to occasional bouts of diseases such as malaria, dengue, yellow fever and sleeping sickness. Mostly they shrug them off.

“The current administration needs to continue to work with nations, nonprofits, and the private sector to halt wildlife poaching, transit, and consumption,” said Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) during his opening remarks at the recent Natural Security Capitol Hill Briefing. He and national security and conservation experts gathered for a panel discussion on how to combat wildlife trafficking and the effects of climate change on national security.

“In the last decade, almost half of Africa’s elephants have been killed for their ivory, and some experts are predicting that both elephants and rhinoceros will be extinct by 2030,” said Nancy Lindborg, President of the U.S. Institute of Peace at a recent event on wildlife poaching and trafficking. The illegal trade in protected wildlife is worth US$7-10 billion—some of which has ended up in the pockets of armed groups like Al-Shabaab and the Lord’s Resistance Army, said Lindborg.

While the pangolin’s thick overlapping scales protect it from predators such as lions, this animal is an easy mark for illegal wildlife traffickers. Image courtesy of the Tikki Hywood Foundation, Zimbabwe.

Acting on a tip, Nigerian customs operatives raided an apartment in the southwest city of Ikeja in February. Inside, they found some 4,400 pounds of pangolin scales, and 218 ivory tusks—and arrested a Chinese suspect, Ko Sin Ying, who lived there.

A few months earlier, at the other end of a well-worn trade route, Chinese customs officials made the largest-ever seizure of pangolin scales in the port of Shenzhen. They discovered an “empty” shipping container that had come in from Africa—stuffed with 13 tons of scales. They were packaged in bags that camouflaged their true contents beneath a veneer of charcoal. That haul had killed an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 animals, each about as big as a medium-sized dog.

The global poaching crisis has induced large segments of the conservation community to call for far tougher law enforcement. Many look to policing lessons from decades of counter-narcotics efforts for solutions.

“The same criminals that are trafficking in drugs, guns, and people, traffic in wildlife,” said Christine Dawson, the director of the Office of Conservation and Water at the U.S. Department of State, at a recent event in the Wilson Center’s “Managing Our Planet” series. Experts from Vulcan Productions and Brookings Institution joined Dawson to discuss the links between national security and wildlife trafficking, which is now the fourth largest transnational crime in the world, and to mark recent legislative successes and innovative tools.