With leaders in the field of TCM advocating an end of the use of threatened species in TCM formulas, it would appear that the wheels of change have started turning within the community
The huge variation in sentencing across the African continent is concerning – in Nigeria, sentencing is so lenient that it implies impunity while, for the general public in Uganda, two years for four tonnes of ivory in Kenya and life for possession of 10kg makes no sense at all
A 2021 ivory and pangolin trafficking case had its latest day in court and EIA was there to document the proceedings as well as the challenges of securing justice in Nigeria
Images of a container-load of pangolin scales or ivory or, occasionally, the picture of a rather glum-looking fellow in handcuffs holding up a tiger skin are compelling to Western audiences, but these represent only a disruption, not an end to the stripping down of the world’s biodiversity
New research by EIA has shown that the volume of trade of some of the most widely trafficked wildlife commodities – raw ivory, pangolin scales, rhino horn and tigers – is now resurging after being temporarily suppressed by the coronavirus pandemic
Exacerbated by the commercialisation of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in the 1950s, the demand for pangolin meat and scales drove the decline of an estimated 94 per cent of pangolins in China between the 1960s and 2000s