Pangolins: Scales of Injustice

‘The most trafficked wild mammal in the world’ – so scream the headlines. The burgeoning international trade in these mammals means all eight of the world’s pangolin species (four African and four Asian species) are under threat of extinction.

However, the global Covid-19 pandemic has now shone a new light on the trade: pangolins have been named as possible vectors for the coronavirus to travel from their bat hosts into humans. In southeast Asian ‘wet markets’ multiple wild animals are indis...