Note Making

If you saw the Pangolin, you would probably find it quite adorable. It’s a
shy stooped creature that ambles close to the ground, looking furtively at
the world through beady eyes. When threatened, this pre-historic
mammal curls up into a ball, presenting a hide covered in overlapping
scales so tough, they can withstand a tiger attack or blows from an axe.
These scales are also the reason the Pangolin is on the endangered list.
For one thing, they make it easy to capture and impossible to kill. So
about 3,500 Pangolin are boiled alive in India every year, and about
10,000 worldwide according to the data from the UK based NGO
Environmental Investigation Agency.

Thus separated from the skin, the scales fetch up to 15,000 per kg in the
market, to eventually be used as a ‘tonic’ in traditional Chinese medicine.
All this has made the Pangolin the most poached mammal in India and
the world. And yet there is little data on its decline, only vague estimates
of how few are left, just the fact that the young are being poached so
extensively to hint at how few adults probably remain. Chances are,
you’ve never even seen a picture of one.

It is essentially, an orphan in the wild. Poached, seriously endangered and

still largely ignored. And in the sense, if no one other, the Pangolin is not
alone. Its predicament is shared by the Slender Loris and the Red Line
Torpedo Barb, which are trapped and sold by the thousands as exotic
pets. Likewise, the Dugong or Sea Cow is hunted for its flesh, and the
first owlet is sought after for its supposedly magical properties. The Sea
Cucumber, which is hunted as a delicacy and an ingredient in traditional
Chinese and South-East Asian medicine, has been wiped out in many
parts of the western coast. The Sea Horse, traded in thousands as
aquarium pets, dried curios and ‘cure’ for asthma, faces the same fate on
the eastern coast.

At a time when the impact of human activity is contributing to, if not

causing, climate change, species around the world are in peril; some still
more than others. But within the world of endangered animals,
discrimination persists. Worldwide, the species that pull on heartstrings
and purse-strings tend to either be large, powerful animals at the top of a
food chain (like the tiger and whale) or charismatic creatures (like the
elephant or koala bear).

The hundreds of other critically endangered are left to make do with the
scraps of attention, awareness and budgetary allotment left. Some like
the Pangolin, amble into the news when their numbers drop very far or
very fast, or both. Others, like the Red Line Torpedo Barb, which makes
up 60 percent of India’s decorative fish exports, may make it to the news
when they have disappeared altogether. “With the bulk of endangered
species, the conservation efforts end at moving them from one list to
another as their numbers drop and they become more and more
endangered. This is just a cosmetic change since it does not reflect any
changes of real significance on the ground,” says Shikhar Niraj, head of
TRAFFIC India, a joint programme of World Wide Fund for Nature and the
World Conservation Union. Since ‘celebrity’ animals like the tiger or the
elephant are international symbols of Indian Wildlife, they tend to hog
public attention. This is bad news.

As marine ecologist Deepak Apte puts it, “We may concern ourselves with
the flagship species but it is the minutiae that actually balance the
ecosystem. Be it the Scavenger species, the Sea Cucumber or the
Insectivorous Loris, it is these species that keep the ecosystem healthy
and clean.”