Pangolins in peril

Nobody knows the pangolin population in Uganda because there has never been a baseline study, but Dr. Akankwasah Barirega, the commissioner in charge of wildlife conservation in the Ministry of Tourism, Wildlife and Antiquities told The Independent that pangolins were common in the area.

“These pangolins are normally picked from people’s gardens,” he said, “People do not know that they are actually a protected species.”

As a result, pangolin poaching remains a “big threat” in Uganda.

Vincent Opyene, head of the Natural Resource Conservation Network (NRCN), an NGO that works alongside the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), the police, and prosecutors to hunt down traffickers, says his team has intercepted and arrested several poachers.

His colleague, Amias Aryampa; the NRCN projects coordinator, says close to 500kg of pangolin scales have been recovered while up to 10 live pangolins have been rescued since March 2015. This year alone, he says, there have been five seizures and 42.24 kg recovered.

Opyene traces the carnage to a 2014 court ruling in favour of a local businessman who wanted to export more than seven tonnes of pangolin scales valued at US$4.2 million (about Shs 11 billion). He says when details of the monetary value of pangolins spread; it sparked a killing spree as people were misled into thinking that there was a lucrative market for pangolins.

China to blame

Opyene links the rise in poaching to the increased Chinese presence.

According to this narrative, promoted by WildAid, a global conservation agency, trade in pangolins has surged since the 1990s, when China ceased being self-sufficient in meeting demand for the cat-sized mammals. This is attributed to a boom in the Chinese economy which gave rise to a sizeable middle class with disposable income and exotic tastes. China sought imports from neighbouring Vietnam, Myanmar and Laos, but they could not sustain the market. Dealers looked to places like Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Uganda.

In a 2016 study, ‘Pangolins on the brink,’ WildAid reported a rapid increase in the retail price of pangolin scales over a 20-year period.

Today, pangolin prices range from $22.5 for hunters like Otim, $45 for a low-level trader, $80 for a middle-level trader, $265 for a high level trader and $350 for a restaurant in China or Vietnam, according to research from TRAFFIC, a wildlife trade monitoring network.

Saving pangolins

Conservationists have been devising plans to save pangolins.

Jerry Burley, the general manager of the Uganda Conservation Foundation, told The Independent that his NGO has just completed the first-ever project on rescuing, rehabilitating and releasing pangolins into ‘secret’ safe zones.

“The project is a very small beginning that will hopefully snowball into a much larger awareness programme that helps to protect this critically endangered animal,” Burley said.

“Very little is known about the Ugandan pangolin and hopefully this then will be the catalyst to encouraging much more activity in terms of protecting it.”

On Kampala’s busy Lugogo Bypass Street, a billboard depicts a golden brown pangolin perched on the shoulder of Chinese actor, Jackie Chan. Conservationists say the advertisement targets Chinese patrons who frequent a Chinese restaurant across the road and is part of a global promo video titled “Kung Fu Pangolin”—released last year in Beijing— aimed at pangolin consumers.

During an impromptu lunch-time visit, we asked managers if they were aware of the campaign and whether they served pangolin meat.

Marketing manager Fatuma Nanziri said the restaurant offered prawns and crabs. She knew nothing about whether pangolin was on the menu.

In any case, she said, the restaurant attracted more Ugandan patrons than Chinese. That appeared to belie the Chinese branding and characters around a complex with supermarkets, a travel agency and other businesses apparently aimed at a Chinese clientele.

John Makombo, the conservation manager of UWA, says the billboard had come out just at the right time.

“We wouldn’t want to have people joke around with pangolins,” he said.

****

This story was produced by The Independent. It was written as part of Reporting Transnational Organized Crime, a media skills development programme run by the Thomson Reuters Foundation in partnership with the EU funded ENACT programme. More information at http://enactafrica.org/”