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Prior to 2017 no pangolin poacher served any jail time.
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The common fine was negligible, it's probably less than 100 US dollars.
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To clamp down and to lock everybody up is can be quite problematic because it is hugely
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culturally acceptable, we need to make it globally available out there that this animal
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is going to disappear from your culture and that is a massive thing.
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Well let me give you an example of the trade I've recorded leaving the African continent
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this year alone, which has run about 68.8, tons of African pangolin scales.
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And that, remember, is just what we've recorded which is probably around 10% of the actual trade.
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This is an extreme impact.
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I don't think their populations could sustain this onslaught for the next two to three decades.
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The pangolin is an ancient mammal, evolutionarily speaking 85 million years.
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It's the only mammal covered in hard keratinous overlapping scales, they're completely edentate,
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they can't even open their mouth.
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They've got a tongue almost as long as their body, they're very closely related evolutionary
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speaking to the carnivora in particular, cats.
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Its physiology is quite unique to any other
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animal but because it's so unique, and that it's covered in these hard overlapping scales
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made out of keratin, that's its downfall.
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That's what makes it so sought after.
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Pangolins, both in Asia,
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in particular Vietnam, and in Africa have been used as bushmeat and regarded as
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a delicacy for many thousands of years, but more importantly both in Africa and Asia,
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pangolins are used culturally as traditional pharmacopoeia or traditional medicine if you
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want to call it that, and that also dates back many many thousands of years, and this
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is a great prize and this is a great downfall is the harvest of it scales ground into
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powder and added as a remedy in both traditional African and traditional Asian medicines.
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There's no medicinal value to scales.
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It's like biting your own nails, the same material as rhino horn.
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So it has no medicinal value whatsoever.
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We work in the Gulf of Guinea and Ghana and Syria.
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So our organization is involved intensely in Africa and in Africa's pangolins but more
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intensely in South Africa in reversing the illegal trade in the Temmick's ground pangolin.
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We do have legal sting operations where we pose as buyers and we pull pangolins out of the
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trade and arrest poachers.
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We work very closely with covert police units, the stock theft units also working as
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endangered species units, the Department of Environmental Affairs, the environmental management
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inspectors.
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The national prosecuting authority all collectively working together to combat this trade.
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We are very much involved with police and law enforcement so when they are all about
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to sting for a pangolin in the trade African Pangolin Working Group goes in.
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Ray Jansen and they confiscate
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the pangolin, and after all the processes with the police that pangolin comes here
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for treatment and rehabilitation.
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Most of them are very compromised they haven't had food for about seven to 10 days or water.
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Some have been have been closed in a bag or in a drum sitting in their own urine and feces
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for weeks, they often have pneumonia, they have wounds.
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They need drips, they need antibiotics and quite intensive care.
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This little girl is called Titi.
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She was intercepted near the Zimbabwe border.
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We don't know where her mom is she's supposed to be still with her mom, she's only one and
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a half kilos.
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She's very small, young, probably about two months old.
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So she came to us and that's a yawn.
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She came to us and we have to hand raise her now.
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Give her milk, take her out walking until she's old enough so we can release her back into
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the wild.
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The most difficult thing about studying pangolins is, they are so difficult to find.
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You can't get in a helicopter and fly around and see one like you would rhino and elephants.
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And they're so secretive they only come out at night, they're very quiet, nobody really
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knew about him until they were poached at this level because they were just going on
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with their lives as normal, and now suddenly we have to find ways to study something that
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hides in a hole during the day and makes no noise at night.
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It's difficult.
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Since we've been campaigning and been in the courts and providing testimony and aggravation
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sentencing since 2017, the latest sentence we got was eight years in jail.
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The maximum sentence for a pangolin poacher in this country is 10 years in jail, in collaboration,
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or with or without a final 10 million South African rands.
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You can't save something that you don't know exist.
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They're not just a scaly hard thing they're a mammal and have personality, from the first
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time I've met one, we all say it's like a bewitching, you see them for the first time
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and you just fall in love.
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They can't help you even though you haven't seen one, even though you're not aware of
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what it doesn't mean you shouldn't care about this wonderful mystical and charismatic mammal
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that's disappearing very rapidly.
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The best the public can do globally out there all over the world is spread the word, spread the message,
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spread the love.
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That's the very best thing you can do.
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We need to send out the love for this animal over the world, and we need to like we embrace
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our pop icons, we need to embrace these things just as heavily just as strongly, and with
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the same amount of emotion.
