Assessing Africa‐Wide Pangolin Exploitation by Scaling Local Data

Abstract

Overexploitation is one of the main pressures driving wildlife closer to extinction, yet broad‐scale data to evaluate species’ declines are limited. Using African pangolins (Family: Pholidota) as a case study, we demonstrate that collating local‐scale data can provide crucial information on regional trends in exploitation of threatened species to inform conservation actions and policy. We estimate that 0.4‐2.7 million pangolins are hunted annually in Central African forests. The number of pangolins hunted has increased by ∼150% and the proportion of pangolins of all vertebrates hunted increased from 0.04% to 1.83% over the past four decades. However, there were no trends in pangolins observed at markets, suggesting use of alternative supply chains. The price of giant (Smutsia gigantea) and arboreal (Phataginus sp.) pangolins in urban markets has increased 5.8 and 2.3 times respectively, mirroring trends in Asian pangolins. Efforts and resources are needed to increase law enforcement and population monitoring, and investigate linkages between subsistence hunting and illegal wildlife trade.

Applying habitat and population‐density models to land‐cover time series to inform IUCN Red List assessments

“…Pangolins can occur in a large variety of habitats, including primary and secondary tropical forests, shrublands, and grasslands; therefore, their ESH is large, yet their AOO is likely to be considerably smaller (Ingram et al. ). Our predictions for small species were more consistent with the IUCN Red List than those for large species, probably because the latter are more often threatened by direct exploitation, whereas smaller species are more often threatened by habitat loss and degradation (Ripple et al.…”

“…For example, some species show clumped distributions within suitable habitat due to the patchy distribution of key resources (Mayor et al 2009) or else shift nomadically around their geographic range and thus occupy only a limited part of it at any given time (Runge et al 2015). Similarly, some species are absent or rarer in areas subject to particular threats, such as overexploitation, invasive alien species, pollution, or human disturbance (Benítez-López et al 2010, 2017Hoffmann et al 2010;Ripple et al 2016). Pangolins (Pholidota), for instance, are the most heavily trafficked mammals in the world and are facing severe population declines due to overexploitation in Asia and Africa.…”

A rapid assessment of hunting and bushmeat trade along the roadside between five Angolan major towns

“…During this study, we witnessed a Chinese customer looking for pangolins in one of the villages; pangolin scales, when soaked, are trusted for having medicinal properties for a large variety of human illnesses mostly in Asia, but also increasing in Africa (Soewu and Adekanola 2011;Katuwal et al 2013). It is currently estimated there are 0.4-0.7 million pangolins hunted annually, representing an increase of around 150% only for medicinal purposes over the past four decades (Ingram et al 2018).…”

Historical data for conservation: reconstructing range changes of Chinese pangolin ( Manis pentadactyla ) in eastern China (1970–2016)

“…Retail prices for pangolin derivatives in China have been increasing over time [52,53]. The situation may worsen in the near future if consumption and demand for pangolin derivatives continues [1,3,6]. However, environmental protection programmes in China may have positive impacts on pangolin populations: the rate of decrease has been dropping since several environmental protection programmes were launched in the late 1980s, such as the PRC Law on the Protection of Wildlife, the Natural Forests Protection Program and establishing nature reserves [15,16,20].…”