China, Africa, and the Pangolin Trade

The Washington Post published on 21 July 2018 an article titled "China's Push to Export Traditional Medicine May Doom the Magical Pangolin" by Simon Denyer.

The pangolin is the world's most trafficked mammal. A million of them are thought to have been poached from the wild in Asia and Africa in just a decade. Trade in the eight species of pangolin is illegal. Demand for them comes primarily from China and Vietnam, where the scales of the pangolin are used in traditional medicine. As a result, the pangolin is fast disappearing from the jungles of Asia and, increasingly, from Africa.

TRAFFIC published in December 2017 a study of pangolin trafficking titled "The Global Trafficking of Pangolins: A Comprehensive Summary of Seizures and Trafficking Routes from 2010-2015."

The report noted that large quantity pangolin shipments come from Cameroon, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Guinea and Kenya. The primary African countries through which pangolins are trafficked are Nigeria, Cameroon, Guinea, Liberia, Equatoriak Guinea, Cote d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, and Togo.