An animal expert, Mark Ofua, has narrated how poachers disguise as wood loggers and charcoal buyers to traffic pangolin, and its scale from Nigeria to other countries.
Ofua, who is a veterinarian and conservationist with St Marks Animal Hospital, also alleged that some Asian logging companies in Nigeria are front for pangolin trafficking.
This is as he called for tougher laws by the government and relevant stakeholders to protect animals, ecosystems and also discourage animal traffickers.
In recent times, the pangolin has emerged as the most trafficked animal in the world more than the African rhinos and elephants.
Pangolin is a scaly anteater, small to medium-sized, primarily nocturnal mammals specialised for foraging on ants and termites.
Different from other mammals, the pangolin is the only animal covered in an armour of keratinous scales – the same type found on human nails and skin.
Due to their biological attributes, they are extremely vulnerable to overexploitation by humans, have a low reproductive rate of once in 18 months, and do not survive or breed readily in captivity.
The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) during the 2016 convention declared that “The pangolins are an evolutionarily distinct and globally endangered species meaning they have few close relatives and represent a disproportionate amount of unique evolutionary history.”
While trade in pangolins is illegal under CITES — signed by 183 countries, including Nigeria, the World Wildlife Foundation estimates that almost 200,000 pangolins were poached in 2019 alone. The Wildlife Trade Monitoring Network estimated that about 20 million tonnes of pangolins and their parts are trafficked each year.
In the past decade, Nigeria has emerged as the number one transit hub for the illegal trafficking of pangolin scales to Asia, where the demand is high. The eight species of pangolin found in Africa are all protected, with two listed as critically endangered.
Nigeria is the primary point of export of pangolin shipments as close to 60% of global pangolin scale seizures in 2019 could be traced back to Nigeria. Out of 11 notable seizures made in 2019, 7 had Nigeria as the reported country of origin.
Speaking on the menace of pangolin trafficking in Nigeria, Ofua revealed that poachers of pangolins disguise as wood loggers and charcoal buyers to traffic the endangered species.
This, he said, was responsible for the declining pangolin population in Nigeria.
According to him, pangolins are currently the most trafficked mammals on earth today because their scales are believed, especially by the Asians, to have medicinal properties to cure hypertension, high blood pressure, and aphrodisiac.
“It is also believed to have the spiritual ability to ward off evil spirits. Their flesh apart from being tasteful is believed to have some medicinal and spiritual properties. Added to this, the pangolin is also considered a luxury food among Asians,” Ofua told The PUNCH
Refuting claims that pangolin has medicinal properties, the conservationist said there has been no evidence that any part of the animal has medicinal or spiritual properties.
Due to the increasing economic affluence in China and Vietnam, the demand for pangolin derivatives has put a strain on the population of pangolin in Asia making it critically scarce, thereby turning the attention of the supply for this animal on Africa.
Over the years, thousands of tons of pangolins have been intercepted by port authorities in different parts of Africa. With the trend, Nigeria has become known as a transit hub for the illegal trading of animals.
Posing under various trades, it has been noted that Asians are seen in numerous markets in Nigeria seeking to buy this animal in large quantities illegally, according to Ofua.
He added that these traffickers pose under a trade, especially logging and charcoal business to kill, scale and transport the animals to their home countries.
“From personal knowledge, we have come to know that these Asian logging companies are just a front for the trafficking of pangolin scales.
“You’d see a container from a logger. The top half is full of logs while the bottom half is full of pangolin scales, and this is how they smuggle these things out of the country. Or the ones exporting charcoal. The top half is charcoal, while the bottom half is pangolin scale. These guys are ingenious in how they do this smuggling.”
The conservationist warned that contrary to the assumption that the loss of pangolins has no impact on the ecosystem, “the fight for the animals of the world is a fight for humanity.”
“The infiltration of the African wildlife space by these Asians poses a risk to the population of this animal,” Ofua added.
Peter Knights, the President of WildAid, a wildlife conservation organization working to reduce illegal trade in wildlife products, noted that roughly 50 tons of illegal African pangolin scales were seized globally in four months adding that the shipments contained both pangolins and ivory with the pangolin scales surpassing the volume of ivory.
He disagrees with the belief that animal has no part to play in the ecosystem. According to him, “pangolins are key species in nature. They feed only on ants and termites, so they help to keep the population of ants and termites very low.
“If you are a farmer or woodworker, you will realize the amount of money people spend on keeping the termite population low and erasing termite damage on our woods and all that. You may think that it is very easy to use insecticide to treat it, but everything is interlinked.
Continuing he said, “You use insecticide on ants and termite, but they also kill the bees, and everything is so interwoven that scientists say if you remove the bees from the earth, humanity has about four years before we go extinct.
“Pangolins play a very important part of nature, if we remove them the consequences would be drastic, and we would be the ones to suffer for it. When we conserve these creatures what we mean is let’s save humanity because the fight for the animals of the world is a fight for humanity.”
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