If conservationists and lawmakers don't take drastic action very soon, then pangolins, the scaly anteaters that live in places like India, China, and the south African cape, may be eaten and hunted into extinction.
All eight species of pangolins have just been marked as threatened to be extinct. Pangolins were recently added to the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species. Pangolins have long been few in number, but their situation has grown even more dire. Illegal trade of pangolins is rampant in countries like China, India and Africa, where they are sought after for food, and for medicine in China. People also use their scales for clothing and other objects.
Pangolins look like "walking artichokes," some say.
A group of scientists at the IUCN released an action plan on July 29 detailing how to save the pangolin from extinction.
Professor Jonathan Baillie, co-chair of the specialist group dedicated to saving pangolins at the IUCN, said, "In the 21st century, we really should not be eating species to extinction -- there is simply no excuse for allowing this illegal trade to continue." Baillie is the conservation programs director at the Zoological Society of London.
Pangolins are unique for their armored scales, which are made of keratin. They use their armor to protect them against predators. The pangolin is considered a delicacy in countries like China and Vietnam. The Zoological Society of London has reported that due to high demand in Asia, poachers have now moved to trading pangolins in Africa and bringing them to Asia in an illegal, cross-continental trade route. Four species of pangolins are found in Africa, and four in Asia. Two of the species of pangolins that are native to Asia, the Chinese pangolin and the Sunda pangolin, are now listed as critically endangered, which is one of the reasons why Chinese poachers are now moving to Africa.
Researchers say that over a million pangolins were caught in the last decade, which makes them the most illegally-traded mammal in the world.
Professor Baillie said, "All eight pangolin species are now listed as threatened with extinction, largely because they are being illegally traded to China and Vietnam."
It would not be the first species eaten into extinction. The dodo, a large, flightless bird, was first reported by Dutch sailors in 1598 on the island of Mauritius, east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. In the following years, the bird was hunted to extinction by sailors and other predators introduced to the island. The last widely accepted sighting of a dodo was in 1662, Wikipedia notes. The extinction of the dodo within less than a century of its discovery called attention to the previously unrecognized problem of human involvement in the disappearance of entire species.
