Why Pangolins Are A Lucrative Catch By Poachers In Northeast India & How Its Smuggling Can Be Ended

Guwahati police on Monday successfully rescued a pangolin from being trafficked. After rescue, the pangolin was handed over to Forest Department officials, who later released the endangered animal into the wild.

Guwahati police rescues pangolin/ Twitter

This points to the menace of pangolin trafficking in Northeast India and how the region has become a hub for smuggling of the endangered animal.

Why are Pangolin smuggled?

The critically endangered Pangolin, also known as Bonrow, are trafficked by illegal wildlife traffickers for their valuable scales.

Pangolin is the only mammals wholly-covered in scales and they use them to protect themselves from predators in the wild. But it is these very scales that the poachers are after, as they are believed to have medicinal value and help treat various health conditions in traditional Chinese medicine.

Apart from that, they are also considered a luxury food in Vietnam and China. This has led to it being one of the most trafficked mammals in Asia and Africa.

Pangolin species in India

India has two pangolin species: the Indian pangolin and the Chinese pangolin.

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The Indian pangolin, assessed as globally Endangered on International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List, is found across India up to the foothills of the Himalayas, while the Chinese pangolin, Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List, is restricted to the terai of eastern and north-eastern India.

Why is Northeast the hub of pangolin smuggling?

Over 1200 of these scaly anteaters were poached and trafficked in India from 2018 to 2022, according to a report by WWF India and TRAFFIC.

Pangolins are trafficked to China via Burma, which shares a porous 1,600km border with northeast Indian states like Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram.

This is why Northeast India has been a hotspot of pangolin smuggling.

For instance, from 2016 to 2019, the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB) in Assam has seized 10 live pangolins in the last three years from northeast Indian states.

Pangolin scales seized in Assam/ G Plus

The Wire also mentions that the Centre for Wildlife Rehabilitation Conservation (CWRC) near Kaziranga National Park in Assam has seen a sharp rise in rescues of smuggled pangolins.

A research study by London-based NGO World Animal Protection and the University of Oxford observed traditional pangolin hunting practices in Assam. It determined that members of all tribal groups had hunted pangolins at some point in the five-year period between 2011 and 2016.

This proves the presence of an active trafficking network.

Possible solutions

The Wire quotes Assam-based conservation activist Baibhav Talukder as saying that the lack of awareness among farmers in India is leading to the decimation of pangolins.

Even though the animals are also protected, rhinos and tigers get all the attention, he said.

Further, has been no systematic research on pangolins in Assam, but seizure data indicate a growing problem.

A Pangolin being released back to the wild.

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¡ª Assam Forest Department (@assamforest) July 18, 2023

The research study by University of Oxford, published in the journal Nature Communications, states that in order to reduce pangolin trafficking, it is necessary to reduce poverty and promote alternative livelihoods.

They also push for pangolins to be removed from the Pharmacopoeia of the People¡¯s Republic of China, the traditional medicine industry¡¯s handbook.

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