Study Finds Meat, Not Scales, Drives Nigeria's Pangolin Hunts as Communities Back New Bans

Africa: Why Anti-Trafficking Measures Alone Won't Save Africa's Pangolins

Analysis - Nigeria accounts for the largest volume of detected pangolin scales illegally traded from Africa. Between 2010 and 2021, 190,000kg of scales - representing nearly 800,000 African pangolins - were seized in shipments linked to Nigeria, despite a ban on international trade.

Pangolin hunting in southeast Nigeria is motivated more by local meat consumption than international demand for scales - Nature Ecology & Evolution

Thousands of species are threatened by overexploitation, often driven by a complex interplay of local and global demand for various products—a dynamic frequently overlooked in wildlife trade policies. African pangolins, regarded as the world’s most trafficked wild mammals, are a heavily exploited group for different reasons across geographic scales. However, it remains unclear how far the burgeoning trafficking of their scales to Asia for medici…

Pangolins in Nigeria may be hunted for food rather than illicit scales trade

The vast majority of pangolin hunting in African forest landscapes is done for meat consumed by people in the region, rather than for scales shipped to East Asia, a new study led by the University of Cambridge suggests.

Pangolins in West Africa hunted for food rather than for illicit scales trade

Research finds that appetite for bushmeat – rather than the black market for scales to use in traditional Chinese medicine – may be driving West Africa’s illegal hunting of one of the world’s most threatened mammals.

Rewrite Pangolins in Africa hunted for food rather than illicit scales

image: White-bellied pangolin on a tree in Nigeria.  view more  Credit: Alex Moore Study suggests that appetite for bushmeat – rather than black market for scales to use in traditional Chinese medicine – may be driving West Africa’s illegal hunting of one of the world’s most threatened mammals.