Pangolin trade

The pangolin trade is the illegal poaching, trafficking, and sale of pangolins, parts of pangolins, or pangolin-derived products. Pangolins are believed to be the world's most trafficked mammal, accounting for as much as 20% of all illegal wildlife trade. According to the IUCN, more than a million pangolins were poached in the decade prior to 2014.

The most common reasons for trafficking are for the animals' scales, which are believed to treat a variety of health conditions in traditional Chinese medicine, and to eat as a luxury food in Vietnam and China.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), which regulates the international wildlife trade, has placed restrictions on the pangolin market since 1975, and in 2016, it added all eight pangolin species to its Appendix I, reserved for the strictest prohibitions on animals threatened with extinction. They are also listed on the IUCN Red List, all with decreasing populations and designations ranging from Vulnerable to Critically Endangered. Despite illegality, the pangolin trade has remained substantial, owing to smuggling and lax enforcement in some parts of the world.

Pangolins are mammals of the order Pholidota, of which there is one extant family, Manidae, with three genera: Manis includes four species in Asia, and Phataginus and Smutsia each comprise two species in Africa. They are the only mammal known to have a layer of large, protective keratin scales covering their skin. Though sometimes known by the common name "scaly anteater," and formerly considered to be in the same order as anteaters, they are taxonomically distant, grouped with Carnivora under the clade Ferae.

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