The project aims to study the ecology of the Indian pangolin to identify the key factors which govern its presence and habitat use. This will help improve the efficacy of the forest staff in detecting pangolin presence and eventually lead to developing a spatial conservation strategy for the species.

The demand for pangolin scales in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has fuelled poaching of pangolins to an extent that globally, wild pangolin populations have seen a rapid decline ranging from 50 to 80 percent across their eight extant species. Not only scales, but even their meat is in high demand in China and South-east Asian countries. This has resulted in the illegal trade of live pangolins across their range.

Often, anti-poaching efforts lead to seizures of scales for which pangolins are killed. Where live pangolin confiscations are concerned, globally, about 50 percent mortality is recorded among rewilded pangolins. This low success rate is due to the release of individuals from unknown geographical locations to sites which are not suitable or resource-rich for pangolins. The need of the hour for the Indian pangolin is to have robust anti-poaching strategies and an increased rate of successful rehabilitation of rescued individuals.

In lieu of this, WCT in collaboration with the MPFD started a project to understand the ecology of the Indian pangolin with the help of radio-tagged individuals.

Dogs are being trained to assist in pangolin surveys. We have trained two dogs so far in pangolin detection to help locate their burrows and scat.

Another objective of the project is to map critical sites where active protection measures for wild pangolins could be initiated. This will help in developing a specific patrolling strategy to enhance protection cover to critical pangolin sites in the study areas.

Based on the learnings from the rehabilitation work, we identified a need for better transportation boxes for the rescued/confiscated pangolins and designed customised pangolin transportation boxes to securely transport rescued/confiscated pangolins.