China’s Appetite for Pangolin Is Threatening the Creature’s Existence

If anything dramatizes the plight of the pangolin — a small, scaly, insect-eating mammal found in Asia and Africa — it is the seizure, on May 13, of 956 carcasses in a van in China’s Guangdong province. The bust was among the biggest ever recorded in China, the world’s largest market for the creature. MoreThis Is a Really Bad Time to be a North Korean Weather ForecasterHere’s Why Some Indonesians Are Spooked by This Presidential ContenderMilitants Vow to March on Baghdad After Taking Mosul, Tikrit NBC NewsAll 74 School Shootings Since Newtown, In One Depressing Map Huffington PostPhoenix Priest Shot Dead, Another Wounded at Catholic Church NBC NewsTwo weeks later, Hong Kong customs intercepted a shipment from South Africa, labeled “plastic pet,” that turned out to be 1,000 kg of pangolin scales — worth $645,000 on the black market. If you go by the same rule of thumb as Interpol, which figures that contraband seizures in general represent no more than 20% of actual volume, then the trade in pangolins is out of hand. With almost 23,400 smuggled pangolins intercepted from 2011 to 2013, the real figure must be in the hundreds of thousands — and that only includes reported seizures of dead or live pangolins, not their scales. Popular Among Subscribers No Soldier Left Behind Subscribe The Transgender Tipping PointThe Green Revolution Is HereDemand for this nocturnal, ant-eating creature comes mostly ...
Source: TIME.com: Top Science and Health Stories - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized African Pangolin Asia Asian Pangolin China Pangolin Trade Traditional Chinese Medicine trafficking Source Type: news