Pangolin Patrol

Here’s my podcast on rescuing a pangolin from a bush meat market and releasing it back into the wild. Pangolins need guardian angels and anyone can be one.

Listen to the podcast on audio by clicking on this YouTube link. Or read the article below and scroll down to watch the two short (2 mins) videos.

Did you know that a baby pangolin is called a pangopup? And that female pangolins have one pangopup at a time that clings to the top of their long, scaled tails. Foraging for ants, up trees and on forest floors in Africa and Asia, there are eight species of pangolins – the only mammals to have scales. They are strange, curious looking animals, their plate-like scales intricate and regimented like a fir cone, an artichoke, a fern – some sort of imaginary moving plant with beady eyes. A creature that looks as though it has been created by the forest itself, their genus name ‘Manis’ was chosen by the 18^th century zoologist Carl Linnaeus from the Latin for ‘spirit’ because of its obscure and otherworldly appearance. With no teeth, just a very long tongue and a defensive instinct to curl up into a tight ball, their modern name comes from a Malayan word ‘pengguling’ that means ‘one who rolls up’. When they are in a ball, their scales spiral into a pattern and shape like an ammonite and as still as a fossil, desperately patient, they stay cocooned, only uncurling when the threat has gone. There are three species in Ghana, although the giant pangolin is thought to be extinct. The other two – the long tailed and the black bellied are critically endangered just like all pangolins across the world. Hunted for their meat and their scales, their future is bleak. Although there has been an international ban on the pangolin trade from 2017, according to a 2020 report on wildlife crime for the UNODC, in the last five years over four hundred thousand pangolins have been killed for their scales.

In Ghana pangolins live in Atewa forest in the south of the country. Steep sided hills and ridges are covered in a swathe of dark green, broken up by low hanging mist that lingers. Scented blossom spills out down the valleys. Atewa is a collection of treasures from over two hundred species of birds to endemic plants and insects but Atewa’s own existence also hangs in the balance. As well as its animals being poached, it is illegally felled of its trees and mined for its gold and bauxite, facing an onslaught of human obstacles. But for now, there is still a forest and within it, there are still pangolins. I know this because I am walking through Atewa with a pangolin, amongst the trees, my body dripping with sweat, here to give the forest back its most precious animal.

I have walked up and down steep tracks, first a muddy vermillion road and on, cutting into the forest down animal trails – lines made from antelope, porcupine, civet cats – a slither of compacted earth running through the trees. As I have walked, I have begun to understand the forest – that it is a being of light and shade, a creature of dappled patterns of greens and golds accenting pockets of black. A thing of stillness that provokes an instinct of feeling eerily away from everything that I know because deep inside the forest it is noise that is proof of existence, not motion. Still and loud is a combination that speaks of a strange imbalance, of skewed reality, of a hidden truth that my human brain scrambles to understand. A truth that is seeping back into the pangolin, telling it that it is home as it hears the layers of sound build up from the forest floor to the canopy way above us: whistles and squeaks, some ongoing some sporadic; constant humming, buzzing, whirring – noises that spring from vibrations of all pitches like a spice mix of sound. No one noise dominates. Instead, they fight each other, simmering down to a rhythmic background tune like standing on the edge of a fairground.

I catch my breath, watching the only movement other than me – a blue diadem butterfly. Named after cornflowers for its blue coat, it has a wingspan as wide as my palm. It flits past my head and down to the ground like a falling leaf, settling on a vine in front of my feet. A delicate bright piece of the forest that stands out in an iridescent gleam. The pangolin is the opposite. Each scale is the colour of the darkest brown leaves fading into the golden tone of the sunlight that is seeping through the gaps in the trees. Its scales are made from keratin – the same material that nails are made from. Each one has the forest’s earth under it – fragments of home that it took with it when it was kidnapped by hunters and put in a plastic bag on the side of the road to be sold and eaten.

In Ghana main roads act as moving supermarkets: hawkers weave in and out of the traffic with silver bowls on their heads, selling everything from shrimp kebabs to phone chargers, giant snails to mirrors and maps, Bibles, washing detergent, fire extinguishers. Bush meat is also sold. On the fast road between the two main cities in Ghana – Accra and Kumasi, little grass rooved huts pop up every now and then. On tables or being held by the sellers, there are dead 7kg cane rats, known as grasscutters, antelopes and civet cats laid out, dripping with blood, pools of maroon dotting the ground. Amongst these wild animals are pangolins. Despite being illegal to hunt, they fetch the highest price out of all the bush meat. Considered to be a royal delicacy, they are eaten for special occasions or by those who can afford them. There is a darker trade in Ghana too where buyers hoard collections of pangolins to sell their scales for Chinese medicine. Ground up in to powder and put into a pill, the scales have no proven health benefits but just like rhino horn and moon bear bile, the demand overrides scientific fact.

There are some organisations determined to give a voice to the pangolins and fight to save not only these animals but the forests that they live in. One of them is A Rocha, a conservational NGO in Ghana that agreed to take me on a pangolin patrol. They are the reason why I am in the middle of a forest with a pangolin – a group of conservationists determined to make a difference. I went with Daryl Bosu, the Deputy National Director who conducts regular patrols, educating the sellers and confiscating the pangolins. He explained that many of the sellers have bought the pangolins from hunters, both groups often not realising the pangolin is a protected species. Kept alive, the pangolins are put at the backs of the stands, stored in bags or hidden within the middle section of old car tyres. Without food or water for days they slowly weaken, unable to stay in their defensive ball, hanging limply when the sellers hold them by their tails, their long tongues falling towards the ground. It is a pitiful, heart breaking sight. But they can recover. Pangolins rescued in a bad state are housed in cages overnight, sometimes longer by Daryl’s team, supported by conservationist and researcher Ransford Agyei, who sprinkles honey nearby to attract ants – the pangolin’s main diet and rehydrates them. Ransford then releases the pangolins back into safer places within the Atewa forest reserve in the hope that they will not be recaptured. This is an ongoing battle.

Earlier this morning we found a single pangolin. It was surrounded by the sounds of human whistles and shrieks, engines, cars speeding past, radios blaring. Sounds that would have been as unfamiliar to it as the rainforest sounds are to me now. When the seller saw our car pull over he rushed to present the bush meat, ready to barter for a good price, his hands filled with flattened and smoked, rigid and blackened grasscutters. Another seller came up holding a dead and bloodied royal antelope but Daryl asked whether there were any pangolins. The first man nodded, explained he could not show the pangolin straight away because it was illegal and went back to his stand, reappearing with one in his hand. Daryl got out of the car. The pangolin, tightly curled up, looked like an inanimate object, something easily dismissed as not being a living creature, let alone immeasurably precious – a species that has survived for over sixty million years that is now on the brink of extinction. The seller held the pangolin in such a casual way, in one hand by his side as though it was a football. To the seller it was something that could help fund his own family so he could put food on the table and pay for the education of his children.

For the moments where Daryl intervened, diplomatically arguing the pangolin’s cause and stipulating the law, I forgot to breathe, my eyes locked on to the ball of scales in the wrong hands. Human hands that contributed to the pangolin’s label of the world’s most trafficked animal – the very saddest crown of all. As Daryl explained that he would be confiscating the pangolin, another car pulled up behind us. Inside was a man specifically asking for pangolins – someone who was not asking to save one but to eat one. I watched the fate of this single pangolin being fought over, its death row trial being conducted on a tarmacked road in the middle of Ghana as though it represented the fate of its entire species. This time, the good guy one. Daryl got back in the car with the pangolin. We drove down the road and pulled in at a garage – a dirty, noisy concrete place that smelt of petrol – somewhere that I would never expect to see a pangolin. Carefully putting the pangolin in a cage, Daryl handed it over to me to release it with the help of Ransford who would show me a safe spot in the forest.

Now, far away from the road, the pangolin is almost safe. Ransford is up ahead of me, disappearing into the green. I follow him weaving in and out of the trees, climbing over fallen branches and moss-covered rocks. I am slower, careful not to knock the pangolin in the cage. An urgency is mounting inside me, keeping me moving in the sweltering heat. A determined feeling to get the hell away from other people. As the distance lengthens, that feeling founded in anger, is changing. Hope is beginning to billow out of me in whisps of tears and smiles, a concoction of emotion that hints at the depth of the plight of the pangolin. I step away from the narrow path, avoiding the golden orb spider and its web that sits like a taut hammock between two trunks. Ransford is waiting for me to give me a nod of approval before walking away. This is the release spot. I lift the pangolin out of its cage, holding it in my hands. Still in a tight ball, it is fluttering slightly, its scales going up and down as it breathes, its tail moving a fraction. For a moment I look down at the pangolin, a creature of curious beauty that represents both the wonder of the natural world and the struggle it faces as the wild inadvertently butts heads with humanity. I put the pangolin on the ground in amongst the carpet of dry leaves, not far from a small stream. Giving it one last look, a round burnt-caramel stone on a bed of leaves, I turn, leaving it alone. Here it will eventually uncoil, its life unravelling back into the forest where it belongs.