Pangolin Conservation in Malawi: Threats, Protected Areas, and the Fight Against Trafficking

Malawi is home to Temminck's ground pangolin (Smutsia temminckii), the most widespread pangolin species on the African continent and one of the most heavily trafficked mammals in the world. Landlocked between Zambia, Tanzania, and Mozambique, Malawi occupies a critical position in both the ecological range of this species and the illicit trade networks that threaten its survival. Understanding the conservation landscape in Malawi means grappling with deforestation, indiscriminate snaring, transboundary trafficking, and a near-total absence of reliable population data — while also recognising the organisations and communities working to turn the tide.

Habitat: Miombo Woodland and Its Pressures

The dominant natural habitat of Temminck's ground pangolin in Malawi is miombo woodland, the vast belt of Brachystegia and Julbernardia savanna that stretches across central and southern Africa. Malawi's miombo provides the loose, sandy or loamy soils that pangolins depend on for burrowing, along with the termite mounds and ant colonies that form the core of their diet. Pangolins are largely solitary and nocturnal, and in miombo they move across wide home ranges in search of food, making them particularly vulnerable when woodland cover is fragmented.

Charcoal production is among the most destructive forces acting on Malawi's miombo. The country relies heavily on charcoal and firewood for domestic energy, and demand from urban centres including Lilongwe and Blantyre drives continuous cutting of woodland, often well beyond legally designated areas. Subsistence agriculture also expands steadily into former woodland as population pressure increases, reducing the contiguous habitat that pangolins require. Compounding these pressures, climate change is altering the rainfall patterns that underpin miombo ecology. Shifts in wet-season timing and intensity affect the productivity of ant and termite colonies, the prey base on which pangolins depend, and also increase the frequency of destructive wildfires in dry years.

The cumulative result is a fragmented and shrinking habitat base, within which pangolins must navigate an increasingly dangerous landscape of human activity.

Protected Areas: Kasungu, Liwonde, and Nyika

Malawi maintains a network of national parks and wildlife reserves that provide the most substantive formal protection for pangolins and their habitat, though each faces significant management challenges.

Kasungu National Park, in the central region on the Zambian border, covers approximately 2,316 square kilometres of miombo woodland and is one of the largest protected areas in the country. However, Kasungu has suffered severe habitat degradation, particularly in its northern sections, where decades of charcoal cutting and agricultural encroachment have stripped large areas of their woodland cover. Wildlife populations across the park declined sharply during periods of reduced ranger capacity, and recovery has been slow. For pangolins, which require intact miombo and minimal human disturbance, the northern reaches of Kasungu now offer little suitable habitat.

Liwonde National Park, situated in the southern region along the Shire River, presents a contrasting picture. Liwonde has received significant conservation investment in recent years, including a restocking programme for large mammals and improvements to anti-poaching operations. The park's riverine and miombo habitats support a range of species, and pangolin sightings, though infrequent, have been recorded within its boundaries. The Shire River corridor also functions as an ecological linkage to Mozambique, underscoring the transboundary dimension of pangolin conservation in this region.

Nyika National Park, on the high plateau of northern Malawi, is ecologically distinct from the other two. Its montane grassland and afromontane forest habitats are less typical of Temminck's ground pangolin territory, though the species has been documented in the lower-elevation woodland fringes of Nyika and the adjacent Vwaza Marsh Wildlife Reserve. Nyika's relative remoteness has helped preserve its ecosystems, but it remains outside the core range where most pangolin conservation activity in Malawi is concentrated.

Threats: Snaring, Bushmeat, and Traditional Medicine

The single most pervasive direct threat to pangolins in Malawi is not targeted poaching but incidental capture in wire snares set for other animals. Rural communities across Malawi have long used snares to catch antelope, bushpig, and other bushmeat species, and pangolins — which move slowly and are unable to escape once a snare closes around their body — are caught as bycatch with troubling regularity. Unlike a duiker or impala, which may be consumed locally without attracting outside attention, a snared pangolin quickly becomes a commodity that connects rural trappers to regional and international trafficking networks.

Bushmeat consumption of pangolins does occur in some rural communities, but the economics of the illegal trade typically make it more profitable to sell a live or dead pangolin rather than eat it. Pangolin scales command significant prices from traffickers who supply Asian markets, where they are used in traditional medicine despite lacking demonstrated pharmacological efficacy. Within Malawi, scales are also used in localised traditional practices, adding a domestic dimension to the demand picture that complicates enforcement.

The scale of trade passing through Malawi reflects both domestic offtake and the country's position along a trafficking corridor. Seizure records document pangolin scales moving southward from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania through Malawi toward Mozambican ports, particularly Nacala and Beira, from which container shipments reach markets in Asia. Malawi's road network and border crossings make it a convenient transit country, and law enforcement capacity at these points remains stretched.

Legal Frameworks and Institutional Responses

Malawi's primary legislative instrument for wildlife protection is the Parks and Wildlife Act, originally enacted in 1992 and substantially amended in 2017. The 2017 amendments introduced significantly higher penalties for wildlife offences, including increased fines and longer custodial sentences, in response to the scale of trafficking identified in previous years. Pangolins are fully protected under this legislation, meaning that killing, capturing, selling, or possessing a pangolin or its parts is a criminal offence. Malawi is also a signatory to CITES, and Temminck's ground pangolin was uplisted to CITES Appendix I in 2017, prohibiting all commercial international trade.

On the ground, institutional capacity is provided by a combination of government and non-governmental actors. The Lilongwe Wildlife Centre, operated by the Wildlife Action Group (WAG) in partnership with the Lilongwe Wildlife Trust, is the primary facility in Malawi for the rehabilitation of injured and confiscated wildlife, including pangolins. The centre receives pangolins surrendered by members of the public, seized by authorities, or rescued from snares, and works to stabilise and, where possible, rehabilitate and release individuals. Pangolin rehabilitation is notoriously difficult given the species' specialised dietary requirements and extreme stress responses in captivity, and not all animals can be returned to the wild.

The Wildlife and Environmental Society of Malawi (WESM), the oldest conservation non-governmental organisation in the country, has contributed to environmental education and community engagement across Malawi for decades. WESM's work in building public awareness of wildlife laws and the ecological importance of protected species forms part of the broader foundation on which more targeted pangolin conservation efforts depend.

Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) initiatives in buffer zones around national parks represent another important layer of response. By giving local communities a formal stake in the management of wildlife and woodland resources, CBNRM programmes aim to reduce the incentives for snaring and illegal charcoal production while building relationships between conservation managers and the people most directly affected by both wildlife and restrictive land-use rules. Results have been mixed, and the approach requires sustained funding and genuine community ownership to deliver conservation outcomes.

Transboundary coordination with neighbouring countries — Zambia, Tanzania, and Mozambique — is increasingly recognised as essential given the trafficking corridors that cross these borders. Joint law enforcement operations and information sharing on trafficking networks have produced some notable seizures, but consistent, institutionalised cooperation remains a work in progress. The scale of the trade and the sophistication of the networks involved demand a regional response that no single country can provide alone.

Research Gaps and the Path Forward

One of the most significant obstacles to effective pangolin conservation in Malawi is the near-total absence of baseline population data. No reliable national population estimate exists for Temminck's ground pangolin in Malawi, and the few ecological studies conducted have been limited in scope and geographic coverage. Without this foundation, it is difficult to assess whether conservation interventions are working, which areas should be prioritised for protection, or how population trends compare over time.

Addressing this research deficit requires investment in systematic survey work across Malawi's miombo landscapes, including camera-trapping, spoor analysis, and community-based reporting systems that enlist local knowledge. Advances in environmental DNA sampling and acoustic monitoring offer potential tools for detecting pangolin presence with less disturbance to the animals themselves. Collaboration between Malawian research institutions, international universities, and conservation organisations will be needed to build this evidence base at the scale required.

The outlook for pangolins in Malawi depends on progress across multiple fronts simultaneously: reducing the density of wire snares through intensive snare removal programmes and alternative livelihood schemes for trappers; strengthening the capacity of wildlife law enforcement at borders and within protected areas; expanding habitat protection and miombo woodland restoration; and maintaining the political will to enforce the 2017 legislative reforms consistently. None of these challenges is straightforward, and the intersection of poverty, land pressure, and organised international crime makes Malawi's pangolin conservation context especially demanding. Nevertheless, the organisations and communities already engaged in this work demonstrate that meaningful action is possible, even under difficult conditions.