Pangolin Trafficking Remains a Major Global Crisis
Recent Developments
01In 2025, CITES/IUCN reporting highlighted that 2016-2024 seizures involved an estimated 553,042 pangolins across 75 countries and 178 trade routes, underscoring the scale and transnational nature of the trade.
02A 2025 Africa-focused study found 130 seizure incidents of pangolin scales linked to Africa between 2016 and 2024, totaling 287,272 kg and implicating 15 African and seven Asian countries.
03CITES/IUCN reporting found at least 709 arrests and 188 convictions based on information from nine parties since 2017, indicating ongoing enforcement but limited deterrence.
Interventions
- CITES Appendix I international trade ban on pangolins, which remains the core global legal protection framework.
- Law-enforcement, forensics, and supply-chain disruption efforts recommended by the Pangolin Specialist Group and reflected in recent reporting, including improved species identification and cross-border intelligence sharing.
- National legislative tightening, including Nigeria's Endangered Species Bill aimed at stronger penalties for wildlife trafficking.
What Works
- Stronger cross-border enforcement and coordinated intelligence-sharing are supported by the concentration of seizures along a limited number of routes and countries, suggesting disruption at key nodes can have outsized impact.
- Forensic identification and better reporting improve case quality and route attribution, which the latest CITES/IUCN reporting identifies as necessary because seizure records only capture a fraction of the illicit trade.
- Demand reduction in major destination markets, especially for scales in parts of Asia, addresses the consumer side that continues to drive trafficking.
How to Help
- Support credible wildlife conservation organizations working on pangolin trafficking prevention, enforcement support, and community conservation.
- Advocate for stronger wildlife-crime penalties and better customs enforcement in source, transit, and destination countries.
- Back demand-reduction campaigns that target consumers of pangolin scales and meat.
Make an Impact
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Verified Organizations
Organizations Helping(9)
The Wildlife Justice Commission tackles pangolin trafficking by collecting and analyzing intelligence on criminal networks, supporting seizures, and helping authorities identify supply chains and trafficking routes. In Nigeria, it has supported enforcement actions that led to major pangolin-scale seizures, showing its model of intelligence-led investigations and law-enforcement coordination.
WCN is involved through the Pangolin Crisis Fund, which it helped create with Save Pangolins and partners to eliminate demand, trafficking, and poaching. Its role is to fund and enable investigations that strengthen efforts to dismantle criminal networks moving pangolin scales across Africa and Asia.
PSG publishes detailed reports analyzing pangolin trafficking data from seizures (e.g., over 500,000 pangolins seized 2016-2024), identifies key routes and hotspots, and advocates for stronger enforcement of CITES Appendix I protections, improved wildlife forensics, science-driven demand reduction in Asia, enhanced law enforcement collaboration, and greater involvement of local communities and indigenous peoples in range states to combat overexploitation and trafficking networks.
APC conducts camera trapping and population monitoring in the wild, supports ranger patrols to prevent poaching in key habitats, runs demand reduction campaigns targeting traditional medicine markets in Vietnam and China, rehabilitates confiscated pangolins, and engages indigenous communities to reduce reliance on wildlife trade while promoting alternative livelihoods.
