Pangolin Rescued in Liuwa Plain National Park

The park team at Liuwa Plain National Park in Zambia has saved a pangolin from becoming yet another crime statistic in the murky world of illegal wildlife trafficking. The Liuwa law enforcement team caught a poacher with the pangolin after a tip off from an informer.

Dubbed the world’s most trafficked animal, the pangolin is a gentle, solitary animal with a tongue as long as its body and curls its entire body into a ball when threatened. Its scaly skin for which there is an increasing demand, is used in traditional medicine.

This particular individual proved to be particularly resilient, surviving five days being carried around by the poacher in a sack. The intention had been to sell its body parts.

It is estimated that 100,000 pangolins are captured every year in Africa and in Asia, with most shipped to China and Vietnam, where their meat and scales are sold. As a result, all eight species of pangolin currently feature on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of animals threatened with extinction.