To capture something so gentle
kind of breaks my heart a little bit.
The greed aspect behind poaching --
it preys on the people who have nothing else to do but this
to support their families.
Mélanie Gouby investigates a black market
for an animal that you probably never even heard of.
This thing is scared.
It's probably traumatized.
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Michael: Our goal is just to simply show the world a window
as to why people do the things they do,
where that desperation comes from.
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It's like they say, when the system fails you...
you create your own system.
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So we're in Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon.
Yaounde is a major export hub for the illegal trade
of an animal called pangolin, the world's only scaly mammal.
West Africans have hunted pangolins
for thousands of years.
But in the 1990s, overseas demand spiked.
With its only defense to roll up in a ball,
the animal is an easy catch for local hunters.
So poaching pangolin became a way
for a lot of poor West Africans to get by.
Today, the pangolin
is the most-trafficked mammal on the planet.
It's on the road to extinction
before most people even know what it is.
I'm here to see why this illegal trade is so hard to stop.
[ Horn honks ]
We're going to a bushmeat market in one of the main streets
to see if there's any pangolin there.
So, what, people are afraid that --
People are afraid of the camera, yeah,
because when the -- the police come,
they seize their, uh, their product
and maybe they -- they go to jail.
But they're okay with us going...?
Yeah.
We can go, like, customers, like curious.
We want to --
We just want to check to see the pangos.
Okay.
To see how they do, the man that sell the pangos.
You can go, like, customers.
So I'll just go in with a hidden camera
and, uh, see what happens there.
[ Indistinct conversation ]
Our local producer, Allen,
says it's too dangerous to bring our cameras into the market.
A policeman was shot there last week.
So we are going to go undercover.
[ Horn honks ]
[ Conversing in French ]
[ Laughter ]
My questions are starting to make suspicion,
so Allen quickly makes a deal to get us out with the pangolin.
Merci.
We need to go.
They were asking why -- why we're asking so many questions.
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That was horrible.
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Our pangolin looks in terrible shape,
so we pull over to give it some water.
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Uh, guess what.
I can see something. Oh, my God.
That's so cute.
So, she gave birth.
I think it's called a pango pup,
and it's actually quite big.
And the baby is quite healthy. Adorable.
We need to bring it back to the forest right now.
Yeah. Because she's obviously very weak.
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The pangolin trade has spiked in recent years
as Chinese investment in West Africa has increased.
There's, uh, a very visible Chinese presence in here.
And, um, just driving around, you can see
that some of the main buildings have been bought, um,
here by Chinese.
Chinese immigrants working on big construction projects
have become middle men in what's become a massive illicit market.
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So we're going to release the pangolin in the spot behind us.
It looks like it's, uh, it's safe.
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This thing is scared.
It's probably traumatized.
We let the pangolin mother and child free
and hope they make it in the wild.
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The next day, we travel two days to Cameroon's Dja National Park
to meet up with a team of rangers
who are fighting to stop the poaching
of Africa's protected animals, include the Pangolin.
We are on patrol in the Dja National Park with the rangers.
They are looking for signs of poachers.
Anyone who's found in the park is suspected of being a poacher
because it's a protected area.
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The Dja Park is a centuries-old treasure trove
for local hunters.
By 1987, the park was named a world heritage site,
driving hunters out of their ancestral grounds.
In the Dja, the pangolin is a prized catch.
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Mélanie: I'm with rangers in the protected Dja National Forest
in Cameroon.
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[ Flies buzzing ]
Oh, wow.
[ Flies buzzing ]
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[ Indistinct conversation ]
Just up the road,
the rangers come across another suspected poacher.
[ Conversing in French ]
Protected animal Class A.
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Africa has long maintained a steady pangolin population.
But part of the reason this animal's future is in doubt
is because its scales are used by the Chinese
to treat all sorts of ailments, from lactation to inflammation.
Even these two scales are worth selling
for someone desperate enough.
[ Conversing in French ]
[ Speaks French ]
Mm.
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The rangers caught two suspected poachers today,
but it's only a drop in the bucket.
Experts like Paul de Ornellas say the government's
lack of resources makes the rangers' job nearly impossible.
The Dja is roughly, oh,
about 5,500 kilometers squared.
And that's basically dense forest.
75 individuals are never going to be able to protect that area,
even if they're very well-motivated
and there all the time.
You need to have a substantial increase
in the number of eco guards, rangers, and the equipment
and the support for them
if you're going to effectively protect the Dja.
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I'm heading to Djoum,
a small village on the border of Dja National Park.
I've been told a lot of families there
rely on poaching pangolin to get by.
So we're going to meet a poacher
who has a hunt planned for that night.
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Mélanie: I'm in Djoum,
a small village on the border of the Dja National Park.
Tonight, Jean, a local poacher,
has invited us on an all-night hunt.
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[ Jean chuckles ]
Okay.
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We'll be going even deeper into this protected forest,
where we could be arrested at any time.
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Tonight, Jean is looking for a pangolin,
the world's most-trafficked mammal.
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[ Insects chirping ]
[ Imitates pangolin ]
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In the past few years,
competition for the pangolin has gotten fierce.
No one knows how many are left.
But more and more, Jean goes home empty-handed.
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[ Chicken clucking ]
In the morning,
Jean brought us to his home in Djoum to meet his family.
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[ Insects chirping ]
Later that night, Jean takes a bag of scales
from pangolins he's poached and heads out to meet a buyer.
The penalty for trafficking these scales in Cameroon
is up to three years in prison.
[ Car doors close ]
Mélanie: We're with a poacher named Jean,
who is selling off a bag of pangolin scales.
Not only is pangolin meat sold in the black market,
their scales are also valuable.
The Chinese use them
for all sorts of treatments and products.
Okay.
Jean has just sold his bag of scales
for the equivalent of $2 a pound.
By the time they reach China,
each pound will be worth nearly $500.
Much of Africa's poached pangolin ends up here,
Hong Kong's harbor.
Over the last two years alone, over six tons of pangolin scales
have been seized by custom officials
on cargo coming in from Africa,
including 2.5 tons coming in from Cameroon.
But some say 10 times more slip past customs
and onto China's black market.
Sharon Kwok is a local activist
who is trying to stop animal trafficking in Hong Kong.
Sharon: This is one of your typical dry-food shops.
Mélanie: And a lot of these products
are used for traditional Chinese medicine, right?
Yeah. We shorten it.
We call it TCM sometimes.
So pangolins have been part of Chinese medicine
for a lot of years.
Yeah. You roast it.
You -- you grind it down. You make a soup of it.
But there's no scientific proof whether it works or not.
If it's been part of Chinese medicine for so long,
why is it just in the past few years
that we've seen such a peak in the trade?
When we deplete our own sources,
we just go and take from other countries.
This has been what's going on for many, many years.
Um, seafood we're taking from Indonesia,
Papua New Guinea, Australia.
Um, and now that demand's increased,
we're also aiming at pangolins in Africa.
We really need to sit back and reevaluate
how we're taking things from nature
because what we're doing right now is so totally unsustainable.
Traditionally, rare animals have been valued for health benefits.
But as China's middle class has grown,
expensive animal products have also become status symbols.
Pangolin-fetus soup goes for $300 a bowl.
We hit street markets undercover
to see if we can find pangolin for sale.
[ Horn honks ]
Man: Oh, okay.
The local crackdown has pushed pangolin sales deep underground.
But the demand in Asia continues to grow...
...pushing pangolin populations around the world
towards extinction.
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