Pangolins are the most trafficked wild mammals on earth. Every year, tens of thousands of individuals are removed from wild populations across Africa and Asia to supply illegal markets. While multiple demand drivers exist, including perceived prestige value and use as a luxury food in parts of Southeast Asia, the single largest driver of pangolin trafficking globally is demand for scales used in traditional Chinese medicine. Understanding this demand, how it developed, what sustains it, and how education campaigns are working to reduce it, is central to the conservation challenge.
This is not a simple story about cultural ignorance or bad actors. It involves complex social dynamics, deeply held health beliefs, economic incentives distributed across long supply chains, and the difficult science of behaviour change at population scale. Conservation organisations have learned significant lessons over the past decade about what works and what does not.
Pangolin scales are composed almost entirely of keratin, the same protein that forms human fingernails, rhinoceros horn and the hooves of horses. Within the traditional Chinese medicine framework, scales processed from pangolins, known as chuan shan jia, have been documented in medical texts for over two thousand years. They are prescribed primarily for conditions associated with poor blood circulation, skin disorders including psoriasis and eczema, and to promote lactation in nursing mothers.
The scientific evidence for these efficacy claims does not support their use. Multiple clinical and pharmacological reviews have found no compounds in pangolin scale keratin that are not present in other keratin sources, including those from cattle and pigs, at a fraction of the cost and without any wildlife impact. The medicinal value of pangolin scales is, from an evidence-based pharmacological perspective, equivalent to consuming one's own fingernails.
Key fact: An estimated one million pangolins were trafficked globally in the decade from 2007 to 2016, according to IUCN data. All four Asian pangolin species are now classified as Endangered or Critically Endangered, and pressure has shifted to African species to compensate.
As Asian pangolin populations collapsed under sustained poaching pressure, trafficking networks adapted. African species, particularly Temminck's ground pangolin (Smutsia temminckii), the giant ground pangolin (Smutsia gigantea), the white-bellied pangolin (Phataginus tricuspis) and the black-bellied pangolin (Phataginus tetradactyla), became primary supply sources for Asian markets from approximately 2014 onward.
Major seizures of African pangolins and scales at ports in Hong Kong, Singapore, Vietnam and China confirm this geographic shift. South Africa, along with Nigeria, Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo, has emerged as a significant source country. The Hawks (Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation) and specialised units within the South African Police Service have prosecuted multiple trafficking syndicates operating transnational networks moving pangolins from southern Africa to Asian buyers.
Trafficking takes two primary forms. Whole live pangolins command the highest prices but are logistically challenging to move across international borders undetected. Dried scales, by contrast, are compact, odourless and can be concealed among legitimate cargo shipments. Scales are typically sourced by killing pangolins in the field, removing and drying the scales, and packaging them for export. A single large pangolin may yield one to two kilograms of scales. Seizures in the hundreds of tonnes therefore represent enormous numbers of individual animals.
In 2020, China's National Medical Products Administration removed pangolin scales from the official pharmacopoeia, the list of approved ingredients for traditional medicine formulations. This was a significant regulatory milestone. It meant that pharmaceutical manufacturers could no longer legally use pangolin scales as an ingredient in licensed medicines. Practitioners trained within the formal health system were instructed to prescribe alternatives.
The impact of this change is real but limited in isolation. Informal and black-market supply chains operate outside the pharmacopoeia framework. Older practitioners who trained when pangolin scale was a standard ingredient may continue to recommend it through informal networks. And the pharmacopoeia revision, while important, does not automatically translate into changed behaviour among consumers who have long associated the ingredient with particular health outcomes.
Vietnam represents a significant secondary market for pangolin products, both as a transit country and a consumer market. Pangolin meat is consumed as a luxury item in some upscale restaurant settings in Vietnamese cities. Demand reduction work in Vietnam faces additional complexity because pangolin consumption there is not solely linked to medicinal belief. Social status signalling, the idea that consuming exotic and expensive animals confers prestige on the consumer, plays an independent role that medicinal education alone cannot address.
The last decade has seen a substantial increase in investment in demand reduction campaigns targeting pangolin consumption. Key organisations involved include WildAid, TRAFFIC, WWF-China, and multiple smaller NGOs operating in specific provinces of China and in Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia. Approaches have varied considerably.
WildAid pioneered the use of Chinese celebrities in wildlife demand reduction campaigns with the slogan "When the buying stops, the killing can too." Adaptations of this model for pangolins in China have used prominent figures from entertainment and sport to deliver messages linking pangolin consumption to species extinction. Research conducted by WildAid and partner organisations has found that celebrity-led campaigns can shift awareness metrics significantly, though converting awareness into changed behaviour requires sustained follow-up.
In source countries across Africa, including South Africa, community-based education programmes work with rural communities living near pangolin habitat. In many African communities, pangolins are not traditionally consumed or sold, but economic desperation created by poverty and unemployment creates conditions in which poachers from outside the community can recruit local knowledge and labour. Education campaigns in this context are not primarily about changing consumption attitudes but about building community ownership of conservation and providing alternative economic pathways.
South African context: The African Pangolin Working Group, based in South Africa, operates rescue, rehabilitation and education programmes. Community outreach in Limpopo, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal has focused on teaching communities to identify pangolin presence, report poaching activity to rangers, and understand the role pangolins play in controlling termite and ant populations that would otherwise damage crops and infrastructure.
Consumer research by TRAFFIC identified high-income urban males in China as the demographic most likely to purchase pangolin products, both for personal medicinal use and as gifts with implied status value. Campaigns designed specifically for this audience have moved away from broad emotional appeals and toward messages grounded in legal risk and social disapproval from peers. Research suggests this demographic is more responsive to messaging about consequences within their social and professional networks than to imagery of suffering animals.
Rigorous evaluation of demand reduction campaigns remains challenging. Self-reported behaviour change in survey settings is an imperfect proxy for actual purchasing behaviour, and wildlife markets are not transparent enough to yield reliable sales data. Despite these limitations, several findings have emerged from evaluation studies conducted over the past decade.
Education campaigns are necessary but not sufficient. Demand reduction works most effectively when paired with strong law enforcement that raises the real cost of purchasing illegal wildlife products, regulatory action that removes pangolin ingredients from legitimate supply chains, and economic development work in source communities that reduces the conditions in which poaching recruitment operates.
The countries that have seen the sharpest declines in wildlife demand have typically combined robust enforcement with sustained, well-funded public education over periods of a decade or more. Neither element works adequately without the other.
For pangolins, the timeline is urgent. Population assessments across Africa and Asia consistently show continuing decline. The eight species collectively face a trajectory toward extinction in the wild within decades if demand is not substantially reduced. Education campaigns represent one of the few levers available to conservation practitioners that operates upstream of the poaching act itself, addressing the reason animals are killed rather than simply attempting to intercept the supply.
Traditional Chinese medicine demand has driven the pangolin to the edge of viability as a wild species. The regulatory removal of pangolin scales from China's official pharmacopoeia in 2020 was a meaningful step, but market demand does not evaporate with a regulatory change. Education campaigns targeting both Chinese and Southeast Asian consumer communities have demonstrated measurable impacts on awareness and stated purchase intent, particularly when messaging is tailored to specific demographics, grounded in legal risk and social consequence, and sustained over multiple years. The work is difficult, the results are partial, and the time available is short, but the evidence base for demand reduction as a conservation strategy is growing, and the campaigns continue to improve.