The Pangolin's Silent Genocide

They come out of the forest at night, small and prehistoric, their bodies armored in overlapping scales that glitter faintly in the beam of a torchlight. The pangolin—also called the scaly anteater—is one of the most unusual mammals on Earth, the only creature fully covered in protective keratin scales, and it moves through the undergrowth with a kind of determined purposefulness that seems almost mechanical, except for the way it pauses, lifts its head, and looks back at the light.

That moment—before it rolls into a ball, its ultimate defense—may be one of the last glimpses of a Chinese pangolin that anyone ever gets in the wild. The species has been virtually wiped out across its range, from the Himalayan foothills through southern China to northern Southeast Asia. The animal you are looking at, if you are lucky enough to see one, is likely the last of its kind in this stretch of forest.

In 2023, wildlife enforcement agencies around the world seized approximately 230 tonnes of pangolin scales—that is the weight of 23 elephants, or roughly 46,000 individual pangolins. And that is only the seizures. The trade in pangolins is estimated to be the largest illegal wildlife trade in the world by volume, having eclipsed the illegal trade in elephant ivory, rhino horn, and big cat parts combined.

The demand is almost entirely for pangolin scales, which are used in traditional Chinese medicine despite having no scientifically proven medicinal value. Pangolin scales are made of keratin—the same protein that makes up human hair, fingernails, and the hooves of horses. They are, biologically, nothing more than thickened fingernails. But in traditional medicine systems, they are believed to stimulate lactation, reduce swelling, and cure cancer, claims that have been repeatedly and definitively disproven by modern science.

In Vietnam, a small packet of dried pangolin scales costs the equivalent of a month's salary for a rural family. In Guangzhou's wildlife markets, pangolin meat—a delicacy—is served in high-end restaurants for $300 a plate. The combination of traditional medicine demand and luxury food consumption has created a trade that is pushing pangolins toward extinction faster than any other trafficked animal.

There are eight pangolin species in the world—four in Africa and four in Asia. All eight are listed on CITES Appendix I, which prohibits international commercial trade. All eight are in decline. The Chinese pangolin and the Malayan pangolin in Asia are the most critically endangered; African species, including the giant pangolin and the white-bellied pangolin, are being harvested at alarming rates to supply markets that Asian pangolin populations can no longer satisfy.

At a wildlife rescue center in southern Vietnam, I meet a wildlife enforcement officer named Huy, who has been rescuing pangolins from illegal shipments for eleven years. On the table in front of him is a crate that arrived this morning from a seizure at a highway checkpoint: 87 live pangolins, smuggled in bamboo cages, their scales dulled by dehydration, their eyes wide with terror.

"They bite," Huy says, showing me a scar on his forearm. "They bite and they hiss and they spray their acid. But they cannot stop what is happening to them. They can only try to survive the night."

Of the 87 pangolins in the crate, 14 will die within 48 hours from stress, dehydration, and injuries sustained during transport. Pangolins are extraordinarily difficult to keep in captivity—they require a specialized diet of thousands of ants and termites per day, and they are highly prone to stress-related illness. Of the 73 that survive, many will be released into degraded habitat where their chances of surviving poaching are poor. Some will go to breeding centers, where conservationists hope to establish captive populations that might, one day, be used for reintroduction.

The pangolin's extinction, if it comes, will be silent, slow, and largely invisible. Unlike rhinos or elephants, pangolins are small, nocturnal, and uncharismatic to most of the world. They do not appear on the flags of nations or the logos of organizations. They have no celebrity ambassadors, no globally recognized fundraising campaigns. They are simply disappearing, one confiscated shipment at a time, while the world looks away.

"When they are gone," Huy says quietly, looking at one of the confiscated pangolins drinking water from a dish, "we will say we did not know. But we did know. We just did not do enough."