194 And yet, despite the ban, approximately 600,000 pangolins were illegally traded between 2016 and 2019 alone. “We didn’t really see the intended effect, which would be a reduction in the trade of pangolin,” Tinsman said. “It really ramped up to 2019, which was sort of the peak year.” On the ground, in the places where they’re being killed, the shift in poaching over less than two decades, from Asia to Africa, she says, “is this really, abrupt change in the ecosystem and we have so little data to project what we think is going to happen. It’s concerning.” Tinsman emphasizes that wildlife trafficking doesn’t just hurt critical animals and the surrounding ecosystem: it feeds a rise in violence, political instability, and multinational criminal organizations. Trafficking animals is the fourth-most lucrative kind of trafficking after smuggling humans, guns, and drugs. “It is these major international criminal syndicates that are involved in this because they already know how to ship stuff illegally,” she says. “So why not add on timber? Why not add on pangolins? Why not add on elephants?” “It’s not just about the pangolins. These organizations are driving political instability and violence in habitat countries for pangolins.” Battling wildlife trafficking could also reduce the risk of zoonotic diseases. Pangolins in seized shipments have been found to carry novel severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)–related coronaviruses. In the ongoing search for the origins of COVID-19, many analysts implicated a poached pangolin. “Nobody wants another pandemic,” Tinsman said, “and even if it wasn’t pangolins this time, it could be the next.” Not Penguins (But Them Too) Given the difficulties of studying pangolins in the wild, “genomic-geospatial” analysis is giving conservationists a new weapon, and at a moment of urgency. “We know that white-bellied pangolins eat ants, we know that they’re nocturnal, but getting more detailed ecological data for them is a pretty herculean effort,” she says. “So we don’t know what taking them out of the landscape this aggressively and this rapidly is going to do.” For now, researchers are digging up more clues in trafficked pangolins. In September, another team of researchers said they had studied pangolin scales confiscated in Hong Kong in 2012 and 2013 and in Yunnan, China, in 2015 and 2019, and found that some, from the line of Asian pangolins, belong to a previously unrecognized ninth species, one that doesn’t map to any known genetic population using mitochondrial DNA. Tinsman is thrilled with the paper that revealed this new line, which was authored by researchers at Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden in Hong Kong, another partner in the mapping project. “But we don’t know where the mystery pangolins occur in the wild,” she says. Next, she hopes that further research, and new techniques such as eDNA, will offer more answers to these questions. And she looks forward to getting the genomic assays into the hands of the people closest to the pangolins. “Honestly, the biggest problem that we faced throughout the project and that we’re still working on, is figuring out how to get the technology”—and the adequate supplies of chemical reagents—“implemented in Central Africa where pangolins are being harvested.” That would save precious time and resources. Currently, the samples are sent to California for genotyping, but because pangolins are protected by CITES, Tinsman and her team had to apply for a permit to receive those shipments. The process took 17 months. Export permits were also needed from each country, as well as research permits in Cameroon. “That was such a massive time sink.” “I think just knowing that we can get this resolution and that we can start mapping where poaching is happening in almost
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