Pangolin poachers bust

Local authorities working with the United States department of homeland security have turned up the heat on pangolin smuggling syndicates, with 29 successful intelligence driven operations this year alone.

Last year, a high-level investigation involving the SA Police Service’s Crime Intelligence and K9 Units and the department of environment, forestry and fisheries’ environmental management inspectorate carried out 43 blitz operations.

Two sting operations in Gauteng last week resulted in the arrest of nine suspects in possession of live highly endangered Temminck’s pangolins, the only species found in southern Africa. Law enforcement authorities working with wildlife activists infiltrated the syndicate and set up a transaction in Cullinan.

In a dramatic video shared on Twitter, an agent posing as a prospective buyer is seen placing his hands on his head to signal to the waiting task team there was a live pangolin in the vehicle. The agent said he created an alias, posed as a buyer, and a price was set after he received pictures of the pangolin.

“We mainly communicated by WhatsApp,” he said. “They proposed a price, I agreed and we arranged the date and time. The task team moved in about half an hour before and I was there five minutes before.

“Once I saw the pangolin, I gave a signal and then other agents moved in.”

He said the Friday operation netted three suspects, all Zimbabweans, in Cullinan, Tshwane, after he arranged to meet them at a filling station on the N4 Cullinan offramp. The day before, six suspects were arrested with a pangolin. Pangolins, the most trafficked mammal in the world, are so profitable in the black market that wildlife activists feared revealing the price they fetch to the public could fuel the trade and hasten their extinction.

According to the African Pangolin Group, a South Africa-based network of pangolin conservationists and researchers, organised crime syndicates involved in smuggling rhino horn, elephant tusks, drugs and child trafficking were now moving into the pangolin trade because of the huge profit.

“The rate at which pangolins are trafficked has increased in the past couple of years in South Africa. In Africa, the trade is absolutely huge. I recorded 93 tons of pangolin scales shipped out of the African continent in the last year alone. That is well over 150 000 pangolins from Africa,” said the group’s founder and chairperson Professor Ray Jansen.

He said these pangolins were destined for Asian markets like Vietnam and Malaysia and particularly mainland China, where they were used in traditional Chinese medicine. Jansen said pangolin poachers also included opportunistic individuals who might come across a pangolin in the bush and had heard they were worth a lot of money.

“If you want a pangolin, you send out a message via the African bush telegraph. Then the picture and what will be paid is relayed to the rural communities where they are found.”

Jansen praised the department and the police, as well as the National Prosecuting Authority, for their responsiveness in this war, which he said they were winning. Hot spots for pangolin smuggling were Gauteng and Limpopo, particularly Tzaneen, Musina and Polokwane, according to Professor Jansen.

– siphom@citizen.co.za

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