Demand for pangolins in Asia, where populations of these scaly mammals have dwindled, has driven traffickers to Africa, the only other continent where the increasingly endangered animals can be found.
Nigeria has become a hub for pangolin trafficking and other illegal trading of wildlife. But authorities have been cracking down, recently arresting a Chinese national suspected of being a high-level pangolin trafficker and targeting a supply network in a market in Lagos this month. The latter investigation led to five more arrests and the seizure of 8,300 pounds of pangolin scales — prized in Asia for their perceived medicinal value — from an estimated 1,900 slain animals.
Michael Awe, the regional customs chief, said the investigation sends “a strong signal” that the Nigeria Customs Service “will not relent in its efforts in fighting wildlife crime to a standstill.”
The arrests are part of a enforcement push that shows Nigeria’s increasing focus on combating animal trafficking is paying off, experts say.
Nigeria’s Customs Service made the arrests with intelligence from the Wildlife Justice Commission, a Netherlands-based organization that supplies global law enforcement with evidence on criminal wildlife trafficking rings. The Chinese national detained in Lagos in February was connected to nearly 16,000 pounds of pangolin scales seized in August after a six-month investigation.
“The operation shows the value of long-term intelligence gathering and international cooperation — and it reflects a calculated effort to go beyond low-level busts,” said Dr. Meganne Natali, a lawyer and legal consultant specializing in wildlife crime.
To disrupt global pangolin trafficking, investigators must focus on catching top operatives and not just lone poachers, who are often poor and low on the trafficking totem pole, she said.
Wildlife trafficking is a $20 billion international industry, according to Interpol. The trade in protected pangolins is widely driven by desire for the scales in herbal medicine in China. But this is just a tiny fraction of demand for exotic animals, live and dead, around the world.
Nigerian officers recently rescued 12 live African gray parrots, a protected and highly sought species, by following two suspicious unaccompanied boxes on an overnight bus trip earlier in April.
A traveler from Cameroon was caught in late March in Nigeria with 213 parrot heads, 29 packs of parrot feathers, 128 African hornbill heads, five eagle heads and a pack of eagle feathers, and two chimpanzee heads and eight limbs, according to a regional customs chief, Chukwudi Ogbonna.
“This illegal wildlife trade not only undermines our biodiversity but also fuels transnational crime, threatening economic stability and public safety,” he said in a statement.
Nigeria signed the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species in 1974, and enforcement broadly falls on the country’s customs authority. But the authority’s efforts were long seen as “toothless” and it was “not prepared or properly equipped,” Abim Isafiade, a former longtime officer there, wrote in the World Customs Organization magazine last year.
That changed with the creation of the Special Wildlife Office in the customs service in 2021, she said, which became “the new sheriff in town,” focusing on illegal trafficking.
Since 2021, Nigerian officials have also joined forces with the Wildlife Justice Commission, conducting 18 operations with its support, leading to the seizure of more than 55,000 pounds of pangolin scales and 2,200 pounds of ivory, as well as 12 convictions, including that of a Vietnamese trafficking kingpin, according to Olivia Swaak-Goldman, executive director of W.J.C.
Nigeria’s efforts to shake its reputation as a wildlife trafficking hub have had laudable results, said Crawford Allan, a wildlife crime and policy expert at the World Wildlife Fund.
Other countries are similarly toughening enforcement, he said. In Vietnam, which has long faced criticism for failing to curb illegal trade in endangered animals and products, authorities are being trained in techniques to ferret out traffickers and cooperating with counterparts abroad, said Mr. Allan, who has been involved in the training efforts.
This week, authorities in Hong Kong said that the smuggling of vulnerable and endangered species, such as elephants, pangolins and rhinoceroses, had “dropped significantly” after prosecutions and penalties for wildlife trafficking rose in 2021.
Much of the global discussion of wildlife trafficking centers on Asia and Africa. But criminal rings are supplying consumers who want endangered and protected animals and products in every part of the world, and there are transit hubs everywhere.
Europe is an important of “destination, transit and origin for many” protected species, according to the The European Commission.
Wildlife trafficking has become a lucrative business for criminal rings as demand has surged, sometimes rivaling the drug trade, Dr. Natali said. She noted that a kilo of rhinoceros horns, or 2.2 pounds, can sell for up to $75,000, which “exceeds the value of cocaine right now.”
While there is some evidence of a reduction in trafficking of some wildlife products, such efforts cannot be done in a vacuum, experts say.
The United Nations last year noted that “large and powerful organized crime groups operating in some of the most fragile and diverse ecosystems from the Amazon to the Golden Triangle” in Southeast Asia are involved, so attacking the problem “requires a broader strategy to address organized crime.”
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