Pangolin Conservation in Southeast Asia: Rescue, Enforcement, and the Fight to Save Four Critically Endangered Species

Southeast Asia is the frontline of the global pangolin crisis. The region is home to four of the world’s eight pangolin species, all classified as Critically Endangered or Endangered by the IUCN, and it sits at the centre of trafficking networks that move pangolin scales and meat from African and Asian source countries through transit hubs into consumer markets in China and Vietnam. Yet Southeast Asia is also where some of the most effective pangolin conservation programmes are operating, combining wildlife rescue, anti-poaching enforcement, community engagement, and international policy reform into a multi-layered defence of the world’s most trafficked mammals.

Four Species Under Siege

The Sunda pangolin (Manis javanica) ranges across Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, and Singapore, but its population has been so severely depleted that scientists cannot produce a reliable estimate of how many remain. The Philippine pangolin (Manis culionensis), endemic to the Palawan province of the Philippines, has the most restricted range of any pangolin species. The Chinese pangolin (Manis pentadactyla), found in Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and southern China, has declined by more than 80 percent over the past 21 years. The Indian pangolin (Manis crassicaudata), which reaches Southeast Asia’s periphery in Myanmar, is projected to decline by more than 80 percent between 2019 and 2040 as traffickers shift pressure to it following the collapse of Sunda and Chinese pangolin populations.

On 17 June 2025, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service proposed listing all seven non-listed pangolin species as endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, a regulatory signal that confirms the depth of the crisis facing Asian pangolins specifically.

Save Vietnam’s Wildlife: A Global Model for Pangolin Rescue

The most prominent pangolin conservation programme in Southeast Asia operates from Cuc Phuong National Park in northern Vietnam. Save Vietnam’s Wildlife (SVW), founded in 2014 by Nguyen Van Thai, has built what is widely recognised as the world’s leading pangolin rescue and rehabilitation operation. Thai won the 2021 Goldman Environmental Prize, the first Vietnamese wildlife conservationist to receive the honour, for building an organisation that has rescued more than 1,709 pangolins, with nearly 60 percent successfully rehabilitated and released.

SVW operates Vietnam’s first Asian Pangolin Rehabilitation Center, equipped with two veterinary clinics capable of haematology analysis and ultrasound diagnostics. The Carnivore and Pangolin Conservation Program at Cuc Phuong conducts research on pangolin behaviour, health, and genetics that directly informs rehabilitation protocols and post-release monitoring.

In November 2024, SVW released eight Sunda pangolins back to the wild. One female had arrived pregnant and gave birth in captivity. In January 2025, a further 12 Sunda pangolins were released, including one born and hand-reared at the SVW rescue centre — evidence that the programme can support captive reproduction as a conservation tool.

Beyond rescue, SVW established Vietnam’s first dedicated anti-poaching unit in 2018, deployed in Pu Mat National Park. Since its inception, the unit has destroyed over 9,701 animal traps, dismantled 775 illegal camps, confiscated 78 guns, and arrested 558 people for poaching. The Cuc Phuong Rewilding Action Plan 2026–2035 envisions transforming the national park into a natural gene bank capable of supplying wildlife populations to other protected areas across the country.

Palawan: Protecting the World’s Most Restricted Pangolin

In the Philippines, the Katala Foundation, led by Dr Sabine Schoppe, runs the Palawan Pangolin Conservation Program focused on the Philippine pangolin, a species found nowhere else on Earth. The foundation partners with communities at Lake Manguao in Taytay and Barangay Teneguiban in El Nido to establish Local Pangolin Conservation Areas where former poachers are engaged as conservation participants rather than excluded from the process.

The Mantalingahan Landscape, which hosts the programme’s core conservation area, is home to over 12,000 Indigenous peoples from the Palaw’an, Tagbanua, Molbog, and Batak communities whose traditional relationships with forest ecosystems make them essential partners in pangolin protection. A 2025 study published in Discover Conservation documented the social-ecological complexities of this work, noting tensions between Indigenous peoples’ rights, including traditional pangolin use, and conservation mandates that must be navigated rather than imposed.

In 2026, the Katala Foundation is expanding into Roxas town, partnering with additional barangays to extend the geographic reach of community-led pangolin protection across Palawan province.

The Trafficking Landscape: Disruption or Displacement?

The Wildlife Justice Commission’s March 2025 report documented an 84 percent decline in reported pangolin trafficking by 2024 compared to 2019 levels. No significant pangolin scale seizures have been reported at any seaport globally for three years, or at any airport for more than five years. These figures appear encouraging, but the report cautions that the decline may partly reflect traffickers evading detection rather than a genuine reduction in trade volume.

Vietnam remains a critical node in the trafficking network. The Environmental Investigation Agency has documented a continued flow of pangolin scales into China through Vietnam, with most sourced from West and Central Africa but with a resurgence of Asian pangolin scales appearing in trade. Traffickers use official and unofficial border crossings in northern Vietnamese provinces such as Quang Ninh and Lang Son, concealing wildlife products in frozen food, timber, and medicinal materials shipments.

Malaysia, historically a major seizure country, saw a significant legal setback in November 2024 when a Senior Customs Officer arrested in connection with a 1.8-tonne pangolin scale seizure received a discharge not amounting to acquittal, suspending the case indefinitely. Despite legislative amendments in 2022 that increased maximum penalties to 15 years imprisonment and RM1 million fines, enforcement gaps persist. The Wildlife Conservation Act’s Section 88b criminalising online wildlife trade has still not been gazetted into law.

China’s Pharmacopoeia Shift: Progress With Caveats

In January 2025, China announced an annual quota of one metric ton of pangolin scales for medicinal use. Two months later, China’s 2025 Pharmacopoeia removed all 19 pangolin-based medicine formulas, with the changes taking effect on 1 October 2025. Conservation organisations cautiously welcomed the pharmacopoeia delisting but warned that it does not constitute a full market ban. The domestic market for pangolin scales remains open under the one-ton annual quota, and China has not disclosed the quantity, provenance, or management protocols for its existing stockpiles.

The Environmental Investigation Agency concluded that the pharmacopoeia exclusion, while symbolically significant, does not end the exploitation of pangolins in China. Demand reduction campaigns led by organisations including WildAid and TRAFFIC continue to target consumer behaviour alongside these regulatory changes.

CITES CoP20 and the Regional Policy Framework

The 20th Conference of the Parties to CITES, held in Samarkand, Uzbekistan in November–December 2025, adopted new directives for species facing intense pressure from wildlife crime, including pangolins. The IUCN SSC Pangolin Specialist Group released a comprehensive report in August 2025 confirming that all eight pangolin species remain at risk of extinction. At CoP20, the West Africa Regional Pangolin Conservation Action Plan 2026–2056 was launched as a 30-year roadmap, and the CITES Animals Committee endorsed conversion factors for law enforcement use across five pangolin species.

Within Southeast Asia, ASEAN’s Cooperation Action Plan under CITES and Wildlife Enforcement guided regional coordination through 2025. Singapore hosted a Pangolin Species Identification Workshop in October 2024, providing hands-on molecular and visual identification training to enforcement officers. INTERPOL’s Operation Thunder 2024, involving 138 countries, targeted wildlife trafficking with coordinated enforcement actions across the region.

What Comes Next

Southeast Asian pangolin conservation faces a paradox: the infrastructure for protection has never been stronger, yet the species it defends have never been more depleted. SVW’s rescue programme, the Katala Foundation’s community model, Malaysia’s strengthened penalties, and the CITES policy framework represent genuine progress. But the continued operation of trafficking networks through Vietnam, the unresolved question of China’s pangolin scale stockpiles, and the persistent gap between legislation and enforcement mean that the four Asian pangolin species remain in acute danger.

The conservation community’s next challenge is converting the policy gains of 2025 into measurable population recovery on the ground. That requires sustained funding for rescue centres, prosecutorial follow-through on trafficking cases, transparent stockpile management in consumer countries, and the expansion of community conservation models that give local people a genuine stake in pangolin survival. The tools exist. The question is whether the political will to deploy them can match the scale of the crisis.