Nigerians Fight to Protect the World's Most Trafficked Mammal | National Geographic

[Music] It may surprise you that the most illegally trafficked mammal in the world is not the elephant or the rhinoceros. It is a small, gentle, scaled mammal called a pangolin. Very few people have heard of pangolins and fewer still have seen them in the wild. [Music] They are the only scaled mammals on earth. Pangolin scales are prized by many as remedies to cure everything from cancer to infertility, despite the fact that there is no scientific proof for this. As the supply of Asian pangolins has dwindled, traffickers have increasingly turned to Africa as a means of satisfying the demand. [Music] I'm Dr. Mark. I'm a veterinarian. We have a shelter, and to the best of my knowledge, it's the first animal shelter in Nigeria. In my course of rescuing these wild animals, I stumbled on the pangolin. When I look at the pangolin, it's a very beautiful creature. When you look into the eyes, you see old man's wisdom. Yes, he's very intelligent, that's the pangolin. [Music] Up till about a couple of years ago, I didn't even know we have pangolins in Nigeria. This is because they've been so hunted and threatened. You don't get to see them ordinarily. I don't see the trader as a bad person at that level; it is a means to an end. They are trying to survive. Hunting and bushmeat selling is their family vocation. Nobody has told them otherwise. When you try to tell hunters these animals are on the brink of extinction, they will laugh at you and tell you that, "Look, that's impossible." These people have this understanding that the animals were put in a forest by God, our nature, for us to eat. They don't have that concept that animals can go extinct. The traders see it as a way to earn an income for their families: "I sell bushmeat, so I buy from the hunter and I sell in an open market." [Music] When I did an investigation last year, I realized that the traders, most of them, are now aware that scales have been trafficked to Asia. They don't have that knowledge. [Music] For 30 years we have been doing the training now. [Music] If you can buy one pangolin for 12,000 naira, some hunters would rather sit down and be looking for pangolins so that they can feed their families. They don't know the costs; they get like zero, zero, one percent of the entire deal. So they are being cheated. These people basically are victims of the circumstance they find themselves in, and these people are good people. They do this to be able to care for their kids; they don't have any evil intent. [Music] In my course of practice, I got to notice some things cultural. The average Nigerian has this notion on wild animals, which is basically bushmeat. [Music] Despite the fact that it's against our practice to buy, when I see an animal that is worth rescuing, if it's living, if it's breathing, I'm going to take it. Knock, knock, knock! When they see Mark come in and buy pangolin, most of them know that he won't kill me. And I'm sure they would think this is weird. How can somebody just come into the market, buy an animal, then go and give it back to nature? I mean, it's weird; that's the way Nigerian will think. "Five thousand naira? That's the price? Wow!" Okay, but when you are in love with wildlife, you find out that there's nothing wrong with that. Calm down, you're feisty. Okay, everyone, I might not be able to get all the pangolins, but for that one that I'm able to rescue, it's a difference between life and death. Yes, trading pangolin is illegal, so I hope and I pray we'll get to the point where we'll be making raids at the bush market to stop the trade of pangolin completely. But without backing up the authorities, there's nothing I can do. Corruption is not new to Nigeria; it has made Nigeria the hub for this illicit trade. Where I see corruption happening, I just have to put an ad out there. We've seen adverts on Twitter; we've seen on Facebook. You do an e-transfer; once they receive some money, then you take it down to the seaport, grab some custom officials, and they allow them to go through the system. For Nigeria, we're not just supplying the international trade; we're also a transit point coming from other areas into the country and then getting out of the country from Nigeria. So that's a major problem. We're against Nigeria being a hub. We're not at that place we want to be, or we're making progress. Last year, they had the largest record seizure globally: over 14,000 metric tons of pangolin scales. So it tells that things are getting better. I think Nigeria will make progress; corruption has placed us to become a body to biodiversity. Nathan, come on over. I want to show you something. Sit down, sit down. I want to show you about this animal. My boy is eight years old and he is picking up my interest in wildlife. Yes, you see, it's a very gentle animal. He met some pangolins, yes, and he's intrigued by them because they are quite unlike anything he's seen before. Yes, now that we have rescued them from these hunters, you know we can't keep them, so we take this pangolin to the protected forest where no hunters go to. That's called rehabilitation. Coming back. Okay, last week I did another foray to the markets, and we found about six pangolins. He was bringing them out of the basket. We had large sized ones and then we had this tiny little baby pangolin there. And then I had already made up my mind that we were taking them with us; we won't leave them behind. [Music] Because of the value that has been placed on the scales from other countries, majorly Asia, these hunters now go into the bush for pangolins. If we are able to kill that demand, then you will see that the sourcing of the pangolin will die naturally. Then, we have done releases in the past, but we have never ever released six at a time. We're very hopeful that these ones will breed here and then we can have more in the ecosystem. She's seen bush everywhere all around her and she just wants to go. This is so beautiful. It was a bit heartbreaking getting to leave the cute little one. But he's going to leave; he has a whole forest to himself. And maybe someday, he's going to be the king pangolin of the forest. And who knows, I could be lucky enough to meet him on one of my hikes in a forest. Yes. [Music] So [Music] you.