The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has released a chapter of its annual report, Wildlife Crime: Pangolin Scales, early due to its relevance to the COVID-19 pandemic. As millions are sheltering in place and over two million people have become infected with COVID-19, international attention has turned to wildlife trafficking and its reported links to the pandemic.

The new UNODC report shows that regions in Africa and Asia consume pangolins for their meat and use their scales in medicine, but the bulk of demand comes from countries in Asia where the market for Traditional Chinese Medicine containing scales is driving pangolins to extinction. In recent years, demand in Asia has been supplied more and more by African pangolins. Conservationists are unsure why the source shifted from Asian to African pangolins, but decreasing Asian pangolin populations and therefore more scarcity may explain the shift.

Between 2014 and 2018, the extreme volume of shipments seized is equivalent to a staggering 370,000 pangolins. Experts say the amount of pangolin shipments seized only accounts for a small portion of the total amount of pangolins trafficked and the volume of seizures currently ongoing is an unsustainable level for this highly endangered species.

Without the need for the heavy guns and specialized equipment required for big game hunting, anyone can participate, the report states. It is easy to become a supplier and the supply network is widely dispersed in rural areas making wildlife protection laws difficult to enforce.

The majority of the supply of pangolin scales comes from West and Central Africa, where three of the four African species can be found. Most of the seizures of illegal shipment contain scales and not meat, as the meat tends to be consumed locally. Scales are shipped by land, air, and sea, often hidden under frozen meat, ice, plastic waste, and mis-declared as other goods.

Logging areas are particularly vulnerable to traffickers. As wild lands are developed into sources for logging and new roads are built for transport, pangolins are easier to find in these previously untouched areas and the newly implemented infrastructure serve as easy transport points.

As demand for ivory is currently in decline, traffickers are switching to pangolin scales to maintain profit margins, using their already established routes for transport. Despite efforts to reduce demand in Asian countries, it has remained stable as consumers display a steady need for Traditional Chinese Medicine containing pangolin scales. Last year saw Nigeria as a growing export and Vietnam a rising destination for pangolin scale shipments.

To read the full United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime chapter Wildlife Crime: Pangolin Scales, click here.