Pangolins are the most trafficked mammals in the world and are highly susceptible to stress in captivity. Understanding their welfare challenges is critical for conservation and rehabilitation efforts.
Pangolin welfare in captivity represents one of the most challenging problems in conservation biology. These highly specialized animals have very specific habitat, dietary, thermal, and social requirements that standard wildlife facilities cannot meet. The stress of capture, transport, and captivity causes physiological collapse in many individuals even when housing appears adequate. The conservation imperative to establish captive populations of critically endangered species conflicts with the welfare reality that captivity causes severe suffering for most individual pangolins. The welfare-positive approach is to prioritize habitat protection and anti-trafficking enforcement that keeps pangolins in the wild, with captive programs only pursued in facilities with demonstrated capability to meet their exacting requirements.