Pangolins: Conservation Organizations

Summary: Pangolins are in danger of extinction but there are people out there trying to help. Join Kiersten as she highlights four organizations that are working toward saving the pangolin.

 

For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean.

 

Show Notes:

Save Pangolins: https://www.savepangolins.org

Zoological Society of London: https://www.zsl.org

Rare and Endangered Species Trust Namibia: https://www.restnamibia.org

Save Vietnam’s Wildlife: svw.vn

 

Transcript

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Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

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Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right outside our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

 

This episode concludes pangolins and my tenth favorite thing about pangolins is all the organizations trying to help keep these amazing animals alive.

 

I want to highlight some organizations that are working to try and help pangolins survive. Each organization that I talk about in this episode is one that I recommend supporting because they are doing amazing work in pangolin conservation.

 

Save Pangolins

Save Pangolins is an organization that supports conservation actions in Africa and Asia and raises public awareness of pangolins around the world. The first step to successful conservation efforts is education and awareness. If people don’t know what’s going on with wildlife they have no idea that they need to help. Save Pangolins publicizes the need for pangolin conservation through their extensive social media campaigns and facilitates communication between conservation organizations about pangolins. 

 

They are also a fund raising organization and offer support through three granting programs

 

1. Pangolin Crisis Fund: Is a program run in connection with Wildlife Conservation Network that invests in the best projects to stop the poaching of pangolins, stop the trade and demand for pangolin products, and raise the profile of the little known pangolin. They work in 26 countries with 45 projects and 31 grantees. PCF maintains a 100% donation model meaning all the money donated goes directly to the projects they support.

 

2. Pangolin Champions Fund: This program supports individual conservationists who are emerging leaders in pangolin conservation. They are currently funding 12 passionate, committed, and inspiring pangolin conservationists.

 

3. Innovation Grants: This funds key projects that are creative and innovative and are often harder to find support for such as ATREE, the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment that is currently researching how many pangolins are left in the Darjeeling Himalaya region of India and how agricultural land my be affecting their survival. In Africa, they are supporting the Tikki Hywood Foundation and Pangolin.Africa to develop new fencing technology to save pangolins from electrocution on electric fences used throughout South Africa.

 

Zoological Society of London

Our second organization is the Zoological Society of London. They have a diverse conservation branch that focuses on saving wildlife from disappearing by working with local communities on monitoring animal populations and habitat use, educating the world about what is happening with the wildlife around the planet, and supporting conservation programs in situ, which means on site where the animal lives, to make the biggest impact for that specific species.

 

ZSL is working on over 50 conservation projects around the world and protecting pangolins is one of those projects. In 2015, ZSL launched the Pangolin Conservation Initiative. This was a two-year program that help protect four species of pangolin, the giant pangolin, the black-bellied pangolin, the whit-bellied pangolin, and the Sunda pangolin from the black market trade through supporting anti-poaching patrols and law enforcement at sites in Cameroon and Thailand. 

 

In Cameroon, the ZSL team trained and equipped eco-guards to undertake anti-poaching patrols using the SMART method. SMART stands for Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool. This technology lets law enforcement agencies focus their resources on hotspots of trafficking activity.

 

ZSL also got the community involved by establishing programs to empower locals to report traffickers through anonymous informants and setting up surveillance networks and secure reporting mechanisms. 

 

In Thailand, ZSL also helped set up the SMART technology with the Department of National Parks and Wildlife and Plant Conservation in two key areas that are important to the Sunda pangolin. They also tested various survey methods to determine the population of the Sunda pangolin so that we can determine whether the conservation efforts in use are effective.

 

ZSL knows that supporting these programs is important, but to save these pangolins from extinction due to poaching we must eradicate the demand for pangolin products. So they delved into the market demand to determine why pangolins are being sold so they could develop a public education outreach program to let people know about how these products are affecting pangolin populations.

 

With the information gained from this program, ZSL was able to do the same in Nepal with the local law enforcement there and to reach out to local hunters to help identify sustainable livelihoods as an alternative to hunting pangolins. 

 

Rare and Endangered Species Trust - Namibia

The third organization I’ll highlight is REST Namibia. It is a non-profit organization founded in 2000 to spotlight the plight of five groups of animals in Namibia including vultures, frogs, snakes, dik dik, and pangolins. REST stands for Rare and Endangered Species Trust and they are based in Namibia. Their mission statement is “To initiate and support the scientific and practical study of rare and endangered species in Namibia and to help develop and facilitate  solutions to conservation problems among these species at community, national, and international levels .”

 

REST has successfully rehabilitated Cape pangolin babies and adults that are rescued from poachers. They are an invaluable source of information about how to keep them alive in captivity and have shone a light on Cape pangolin behaviors in the wild. This is the home to the most famous pangolin named Honeybun. She was a Cape pangolin rescued from poachers and now resides at the facility but forages for ants in the surrounding land. A REST volunteer follows her around whenever she is on a walk-about and we are learning so much about their behavior because Honeybun does not fear humans. She will one day be on her own out in the wild but if you’d like to see Honeybun in action check out the PBS Nature video titled “The World’s Most Wanted Animal”.

 

Save Vietnam’s Wildlife

Our Fourth organization is Save Vietnam’s Wildlife a non-profit organization in Vietnam that was founded on the critical need for more effective solutions to secure a future for Vietnam’s wildlife.

 

They are involved with wildlife rescue and rehabilitation, habitat protection, education outreach, conservation research, and conservation breeding.

 

The wildlife they rescue are individuals confiscated by the authorities from illegal poachers. Vietnam’s wildlife is poached and illegally traded for consumption, traditional medicine, pets, and souvenirs. SVW takes in those confiscated animals, provides veterinary care and releases those they can into protected areas to give them the best advantage for continued survival. 

 

They have rescued 1,591 pangolins. Those that are releasable are taken to places that are difficult for poachers to travel to so they are not re-caught and those that cannot survive in the wild are kept at their facility. By keeping these pangolins in captivity, they are on the forefront of learning how to keep pangolins healthy and alive in a captive setting. This is valuable information to the future of pangolins.

 

SVW also makes it a goal to educate local people about the plight of the pangolin. Their mission statement is bringing communities and conservation together. The only way forward to a future filled with both humans and animals living together successfully is education.

 

If you are looking for a way to help with pangolin conservation, please consider donating to one of these originations. You can find links to their websites in the show notes of this episode.  Also consider recommending this podcast to someone you know. Thank you for joining me on this pangolin journey, I truly hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

 

Join me next week for the first ten-minute podcast focusing on the vaquita.  

 

(Piano Music plays) 

 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.