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Children campaign to save endangered pangolin anteater
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DEAR editor,
The junior school children at Dulwich College Shanghai wish to write to Shanghai Daily to raise awareness of a very special endangered creature called a pangolin.
The students have become aware of a very small and forgotten creature, the pangolin, and have celebrated World Pangolin day on February 15.
This is a marvelous species of anteater — four species are found in Namibia, Africa, and another four in Southeast Asia. These creatures are so unique and are almost prehistoric in appearance with their scales made of keratin (the same material used for horns and hooves) and a tongue, which stretches longer than the animal itself.
Pangolins have no teeth and eat up to 70 million insects a year.
Unfortunately, pangolins are in deep trouble. They are being shipped and bundled into crates and boxes, with no care for their babies, which may be carried on their backs.
Their destination is China and Vietnam, to the restaurants and Chinese traditional medicine trade.
It has been proven that pangolin scales do not heal any illnesses.
The illegal wild life trade is responsible for the rapid decrease in their numbers worldwide, but unfortunately this trade is a US$20 billion business.
Dulwich College Junior school children wish to have these creatures in their world when they grow up and wish to make a stand!
We write in the wake of the seizure on May 12 of a huge pangolin shipment — 956 frozen pangolins were confiscated in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province.
The total weight was around 4 tons and the largest one weighed nearly 10 kg. These are devastating numbers for us to comprehend.
We don’t know whether the recent change in Chinese law forbidding consumption of a long list of endangered animals will make any difference. China will be able to jail people who eat rare animals for 10 years or more under a new interpretation of the criminal law.
Some junior school children at Dulwich College Shanghai
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