Pangolins are the most trafficked wild mammals on Earth, with an estimated one million individuals taken from the wild in the past decade, subjected to extreme stress, injury, and mortality throughout the trafficking chain.
The welfare costs of pangolin trafficking begin at capture and continue throughout a brutal chain of suffering. Pangolins naturally curl defensively when threatened, a behavior that paradoxically makes capture easier. In transit, they experience prolonged deprivation of food, water, and space in conditions that cause extreme stress. Most do not survive long enough to reach their final destination. Those confiscated alive face additional challenges in rehabilitation because pangolins require highly specialized diets of live ants and termites that are extremely difficult to provide in captive settings, leading to continued high mortality rates even in professional care.