This trafficked pangolin was destined for a grisly end. Now he's back in the wild |
This trafficked pangolin was destined for a grisly end. Now he's back in the wild
Pangolins are the world's most trafficked wild mammal. They also require huge amounts of care to rehabilitate, but even those caught up in the illegal trade can be saved. Here's how Stevie the pangolin was returned to the wild – and is now thriving.
It took a painstaking effort to save three-month-old pangolin pup Stevie.
Stevie was rescued from the illegal pangolin trade in the streets of Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2021. For the next six months, specialist veterinarian Kelsey Skinner meticulously carried out his medical care, fed him meals of cat milk formula and helped him learn to forage naturally.
A Temminck's pangolin, Stevie is named after Steven Koen, a South Africa Police Service (Saps) K9 officer who played a big role in arresting an "elusive" pangolin wildlife trafficker who trying to sell the pup, says Skinner. It took several days and lot of intensive negotiations to catch the trafficker during a sting operation, she adds.
The pup should have still been with his mother, but she was nowhere to be seen, says Alexis Kriel, co-chair and executive director of the African Pangolin Working Group (APWG), a South Africa-based non-profit.
Sometimes known as scaly anteaters, since their diet mainly consists of ants and termites, pangolins are the world's only truly scaly mammal. They are often considered to be the most trafficked wild mammal in the world. Over a million pangolins are thought to have been illegally traded internationally from 2000 to 2016, while seizures of pangolin products from 2016 to 2024, which capture only a fraction of the overall trade, show at least half a million more being traded during this time.
Over the past few decades, law enforcement and non-profits in African countries have increased their efforts to rescue wild pangolins caught up in the black market. In South Africa, some 80% of the Temminck's pangolins retrieved are still alive.
Still, rescuing them is only the first step. Trafficked pangolins are often young or injured but also don't fare well in captivity, making them notoriously difficult to rehabilitate. That's where specialists like Skinner come in. After many months of her support, Stevie was successfully released to the wild in 2022.
His rehabilitation is part of a growing effort to return trafficked pangolins back into their natural habitat – a long, tricky process that may be essential to saving this bizarre, often overlooked mammal.
African pangolins are now at the very heart of illegal wildlife trafficking, one of the world's largest organised crime sectors. Demand for them comes largely from East Asia, where their scales are used in traditional medicine and their meat considered a delicacy, although the US is also a major market, driven by the fashion industry. Countries passed a total international trade ban on pangolins in 2016, but the illegal trade persists.
As trafficking has pushed Asian pangolins to the verge of extinction, Africa has now become the main source for this illicit global market. Together, trafficking, habitat loss and hunting by locals (for traditional medicine and bushmeat) mean all four African pangolin species are now threatened with extinction.
South Africa has become a major source and hub for illegal pangolin trading out of Africa. Non-profits including the APWG support the country's law enforcement to conduct sting and anti-poaching operations, and over the past decade the country has had the highest number of pangolin seizures in Africa.
Most of the pangolins in the APWG's care are rescued from traffickers in intelligence-led sting operations or stop-and-searches, where pangolins are recovered from vehicles, says Kriel. "We are able to save a small fraction of pangolins in the illegal trade but we don't know where the rest are going," she says.
Nicci Wright, co-chair and executive director of........