Source : The Malay Mail, Malaysia, 07 Feb 2005
By : Eddie Chua
  

Although the Customs officers and the anti-smuggling unit at the Malaysian-Thai border had stepped up checks and confiscated consignments of pangolins, the local authorities believe many of the animals were smuggled across daily.

According to Traffic, a joint wildlife trade monitoring programme of the World Wide Fund for Nature and the World Conservation Union, poachers from Sumatra and Borneo are smuggling the ant-eaters on boats regularly to middlemen in Malaysia.

"The mammals are collected, packed into crates, boxes and gunny sacks, and put onto lorries to be smuggled to Thailand for the slow land journey to China.” said its Southeast Asia regional programme officer Chris Shepherd.

Found in South and Southeast Asia, pangolins have been used for centuries as a medicine by people across the continent.

Its meat is very popular in China where many believe that the scales and blood when consumed with herbs, help prolong life and are aphrodisiacs.

Some Chinese medicinal recipes also use pangolin scales to cure lymph node malfunctions, kill pain or increase milk in lactating mothers.

Pangolin meat is also said to cure a broad spectrum of ailments including allergies, skin conditions, and sexually transmitted diseases. Its skin also produces distinctively patterned leather for shoes, handbags and accessories.

Shepherd said due to the lack of studies on pangolins, nobody knew their number in the wild or the scale of the smuggling trend.

“However, based on our monitoring and ground intelligence, pangolins are a heavily traded wildlife species in this region. The demand for the mammals in China is extremely high.”

Based on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) records (where a permit was issued to export the mammals from one country to another before it was banned in July 2000) Malaysia exported 21,720 pangolins to China between January and July 2000.

In 1999, some 15,405 pangolins were exported from Malaysia. In 1998, the records showed Malaysia exported only 5,000 pangolins.

A wildlife department official said pangolin catchers are paid between RM50 and RM60 a kilogramme for each pangolin they bagged.

“An ant-eater could fetch as much as RM1,000, depending on its weight and size,” he said.

Shepherd said if the trade continues at the current rate the ant-eaters will quickly disappear from the region's jungles and oil palm estates.

He said pangolins are protected under Appendix II of the Convention.

“There is a blanket ban on all trade in the ant-eaters,” he said.

In Malaysia, pangolins are a protected species under the Wildlife Protection Act 1976/72.

Anyone caught in possession of the animal without a permit faces a fine of not more than RM3,000 or two years' imprisonment or both.