Pangolins are mammals that are found in various parts of Asia and Africa. These mammals have protective scales made of keratin that has made them one of the most trafficked mammals in the world. An estimated 116,990 – 233,980 pangolins are trafficked every year. United Nations and the IUCN red list, world’s most comprehensive list of endangered species, have added all eight species of pangolins in their ‘critically endangered’ list. National Geographic has released its biggest awareness campaign where they released a video titled, “world’s weirdest species that have been endangered.”
We as college students and responsible citizens of the world grabbed the opportunity to raise an awareness campaign all over our campus in a hope that some person would get to know, by word of mouth, about this trafficking and would stand up against this illegal abuse of the pangolin. As a part of our research, we realised that Pokemon, the famous cartoon TV series, was among the first TV shows to raise awareness about the pangolin. They named the pangolin inspired Pokemon as Sandshrew whose evolved form was called Sandlash. In the series, there was a show dedicated to this Pokemon where Team Rocket, the villains in the show, keep a huge Sandlash hostage in their den where they planned to “torture and use the Pokemon as their slave.” Towards the end, Sandlash fought Team Rocket and escaped their treachery that symbolized the pangolin’s victory over illegal trafficking.
Once we realised this, we decided to use our knowledge of technology and raise awareness to people in and around our area by creating a Snapchat story and by printing out the old 90s Pokemon and adding its snaps to Snapchat and putting them all over the campus. We will continue doing this all over the week and we aim to induce the picture of this cute little mammal into our fellow college mates and also sensitise this issue of its illegal trafficking. Surprisingly, we have been getting a lot of positive responses from people all over the campus and it is overwhelming to see that there are people who do really care about the environment and the creatures on this planet.
More on Pangolins and its trafficking:
http://www.latimes.com/world/global-development/la-fg-global-pangolins-vanishing-snap-story.html
https://www.nrdc.org/experts/elly-pepper/world-bans-international-commercial-trade-pangolins
http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2014/04/opinion/sutter-change-the-list-pangolin-trafficking/
https://qz.com/170554/demand-for-traditional-chinese-medicine-is-killing-off-the-worlds-quirkiest-animal/