Pangolin Conservation in Myanmar: A Frontline Crisis

Myanmar occupies a unique and deeply troubled position in the global pangolin crisis. Straddling the boundary between South and Southeast Asia, the country harbours two pangolin species within its borders, serves as both a source and a transit corridor for the illegal trade, and faces governance challenges that have made sustained conservation work extraordinarily difficult. Understanding what is happening to pangolins in Myanmar is essential to understanding why the global population continues to decline despite decades of international effort.

Which Pangolin Species Live in Myanmar?

Two pangolin species are found in Myanmar, each facing distinct but overlapping pressures.

The Sunda Pangolin (Manis javanica)

The Sunda pangolin occupies the southern and coastal lowland forests of Myanmar, including Tanintharyi Region and the Ayeyarwady Delta. It is classified as Critically Endangered by the IUCN and is among the most heavily trafficked mammals on Earth. Myanmar's Sunda pangolin populations are closely connected genetically to those in Thailand and Malaysia, meaning that poaching pressure in any one country reverberates across the entire regional population.

Sunda pangolins prefer lowland tropical rainforest and are heavily dependent on intact canopy cover for thermoregulation and foraging. The progressive deforestation of Myanmar's lowlands — driven by oil palm, teak plantations, and smallholder agriculture — has compressed remaining populations into fragmented forest patches that are easier for poachers to access and harder for conservation teams to monitor.

The Chinese Pangolin (Manis pentadactyla)

The Chinese pangolin is found across northern and central Myanmar, extending into the foothills of the Himalayas and the Shan Plateau. Also Critically Endangered, this species faces particular pressure because it inhabits regions with long-established trade routes connecting Myanmar to China. The border provinces of Kachin and Shan States have historically been major conduits for wildlife moving from Southeast Asia into southern China.

Chinese pangolins are more cold-tolerant than Sunda pangolins and are capable of inhabiting secondary forests and agricultural edges, but this ecological flexibility has not protected them from the relentless pressure of commercial poaching. Field surveys in northern Myanmar have found densities so low that population viability in some areas is considered doubtful.

Myanmar as a Trafficking Hub

Myanmar's position at the intersection of South Asia, Southeast Asia, and China has made it one of the most strategically important nodes in the global wildlife trafficking network. Pangolins — both living animals and processed scales — move through Myanmar from as far afield as Africa, with traders exploiting porous border crossings and limited enforcement capacity to move contraband into Chinese markets.

The Border Trade Economy

Much of Myanmar's wildlife trade operates through Special Economic Zones and informal border markets, particularly along the Yunnan border. Towns such as Mong La in Shan State became internationally notorious in the 2000s and 2010s as open wildlife markets where pangolins were sold alongside tigers, bears, and other protected species with minimal interference from authorities. While crackdowns have reduced the visibility of this trade, investigations by TRAFFIC and Wildlife Justice Commission consistently document pangolin products moving through Myanmar's border regions.

The trafficking business in Myanmar is deeply entwined with armed conflict. Non-state armed groups that control large areas of Kachin, Shan, and Kayah States have used wildlife trafficking — including pangolins — as a revenue stream, exploiting the absence of government enforcement in their territories. This political economy of conflict makes straightforward law-enforcement responses largely ineffective.

Scale Stockpiles and Processing

In addition to live animals, Myanmar has been the site of substantial seizures of dried pangolin scales, indicating that processing and temporary storage occur within the country before onward shipment to China. Between 2015 and 2025, Myanmar-linked seizures documented by the Environmental Investigation Agency and Born Free Foundation totalled thousands of kilograms of scales, representing many hundreds of individual animals.

Legal Framework and Enforcement

Myanmar's primary wildlife legislation is the Protection of Wildlife and Wild Plants and Conservation of Natural Areas Law (1994), which was amended in 2018 to increase penalties for wildlife trafficking. Both pangolin species are listed in Schedule I of this law, meaning they carry the highest level of legal protection. Possession, trade, or killing of a Schedule I species can attract prison sentences of up to seven years and substantial fines.

In practice, enforcement has been inconsistent and has deteriorated markedly since the military coup of February 2021. The coup dismantled civilian oversight of natural resource agencies, and many of the forest officers and wildlife police who had built relationships with conservation NGOs over the preceding decade left their posts or fled the country. Conservation organisations that had operated programmes in Myanmar were forced to suspend or drastically scale back field operations due to safety concerns and restricted access.

Conservation Efforts Before and After the Coup

Before 2021, Myanmar had a modest but growing pangolin conservation community. International NGOs including Fauna & Flora International (FFI), WCS Myanmar, and Panthera had active programmes that combined community ranger networks, camera trap surveys, and demand-reduction outreach. These organisations worked within the formal protected area system and in community forests to document pangolin presence and build local capacity for anti-poaching patrols.

Community-Based Conservation

One of the most promising approaches was the development of community forest management agreements in regions where local ethnic minority communities had strong traditional relationships with wildlife. In Karen State and parts of Chin State, village-level conservation committees helped create buffer zones around key pangolin habitat. These arrangements allowed communities to gain legitimate income from ecotourism and carbon credits while excluding commercial poachers from their territories.

The coup severely disrupted these arrangements. Community leaders who had worked with government-linked conservation programmes became targets of suspicion from military authorities, and the broader economic crisis — hyperinflation, currency collapse, and supply chain disruption — pushed many rural households deeper into poverty, increasing pressure on wild resources including pangolins.

What Continues

Despite the crisis, some conservation work persists. Local civil society organisations embedded within ethnic nationality communities have maintained informal monitoring networks, and data sharing with international partners continues through diaspora networks and digital channels. The Myanmar Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, operating in exile in some cases, has worked to keep documentation of pangolin trafficking alive even as physical access to forest areas has become impossible for most international researchers.

The Intersection of Habitat Loss and Poaching

Myanmar lost an estimated 1.1 million hectares of forest between 2015 and 2023, according to Global Forest Watch, with particularly severe losses in Tanintharyi — the region most important for Sunda pangolins. Deforestation is driven by oil palm expansion (much of it linked to corporate concessions), charcoal production for urban cooking fuel, and illegal logging. Forest loss does not directly kill pangolins but concentrates them in smaller, more accessible areas and pushes them into contact with human settlements where they are more likely to be snared.

Snaring is the dominant capture method for pangolins in Myanmar. Wire snares set along forest trails for any game indiscriminately catch pangolins, which then curl into their defensive ball — perfectly adapted against natural predators, utterly useless against a metal noose. Snare removal campaigns run by FFI and local partners removed hundreds of thousands of snares from Myanmar's forests before 2021. The current status of these programmes is largely unknown.

What the World Can Do

Myanmar presents one of conservation's most difficult dilemmas: a country where biodiversity is extraordinarily important but where political conditions make most conventional conservation approaches impossible. Several strategies are being discussed by the global pangolin conservation community.

Supporting Ethnic Nationality Conservation

Ethnic nationality organisations in Myanmar — including those aligned with the resistance to military rule — have demonstrated commitments to natural resource protection that in some cases exceed what state institutions managed. Channelling conservation support through these organisations, accepting the political complexity this involves, may be the most viable pathway to continued on-the-ground impact.

Demand-Side Interventions in China

Because the primary market driving pangolin trafficking from Myanmar is southern China, interventions that reduce consumer demand in China have the potential to reduce poaching pressure in Myanmar without requiring any physical presence in the country. Campaigns targeting traditional medicine practitioners, restaurants, and online marketplaces have shown measurable impact in other contexts and deserve continued investment.

Intelligence-Led Enforcement Across Borders

Regional law-enforcement cooperation through INTERPOL's Wildlife Crime Unit and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Wildlife Enforcement Network (ASEAN-WEN) can disrupt trafficking networks even when enforcement within Myanmar is limited. Targeting traffickers and buyers in Thailand, China, and Malaysia reduces the profitability of the trade regardless of what happens at the point of origin.

Looking Ahead

Myanmar's pangolins are in a precarious position, facing simultaneous pressures from deforestation, commercial poaching, political instability, and a trade network that operates at a scale that has overwhelmed previous enforcement efforts. The prospects for either species in Myanmar depend heavily on political developments that conservation organisations cannot control.

What conservation organisations can do is invest in the people and relationships that will enable rapid recovery when conditions allow — supporting local conservationists, maintaining monitoring networks, and keeping diplomatic pressure on regional governments to treat pangolin trafficking as the serious organised crime it is. Myanmar's pangolins may be more resilient than they appear, but only if they survive the crisis that is unfolding now.