September 30, 2025 • 20 mins
Pippa Hudson discusses responsible pangolin tourism with Liesel van Zyl, the Head of Positive Impact & Product Development at Go2Africa, and Gareth Thomas, an ambassador for the African Pangolin Working Group.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
In Wonder the World Today, we want to talk about
pangolin tourism and how operators can responsibly deal with visitors
who are coming wanting to see one of Africa's most
elusive and most endangered animals. A little bit earlier in September,
it was my privilege to share a panglin round table
hosted by Go to Africa, during which various conservation experts
(00:22):
and wildlife advocates spoke about the challenge of protecting these
magnificent creatures. I'm not sure how well known their story is.
We've had a few conversations on the show about pangolin poaching,
and if you need a reminder, let me just tell
you there are eight species of pangolin left alive in
the world today, four of which are present in Africa,
and sadly, they are very often described as the most
(00:44):
trafficked mammal on the planet. Efforts to raise awareness of
the poaching and trafficking problem have done a great deal
to raise awareness of the problem and public outcry. There's
a bit of a double edged sword here, because in
heightening awareness of panglins and their plight, we've also driven
an increase in demand to see them. And to have
(01:05):
visitor experiences interacting with them, and that's not necessarily always
a good thing, particularly if those interactions are not being
managed very, very carefully. So I was really encouraged at
that event to hear several of the contributors speak about
the very active role they are taking in drawing up
guidelines to help ensure responsible pangulin tourism and viewing experiences,
(01:26):
and to ensure that their guests, if they are lucky
enough to see one, know how to behave know how
to interact or keep their distance when it's called for,
and not do anything that causes harm to these animals,
even if it is unwitting. It's the last thing we
want that somebody coming wanting to see them, wanted to
be part of the solution, unwittingly causes further damage. Now
(01:47):
to talk to us about this, it's a great pleasure
to have two guests joining us today. With me in
studio is Liesel Fanzel, who is the head of Positive
Impact at GO to Africa who organized that roundtable, and
joining us by a zoom is Gareth Toma, who is
an ambassador for the African Pangolin Working Group. And many
of you will recognize him from the recent Netflix documentary
called Pangolin Kulu's Journey. He's the guy who got to
(02:10):
walk the pangolins in the bush. If you need a
clarification to both of you, thank you so much for
being here this afternoon. Lizel in studio and Gareth via zoom,
you're very welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Thanks for having us.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
With that pleasure and hello again Gareth here much. Sure great.
I'm going to start liedl if I may with you
because it's very interesting to me that a group like
Go to Africa took the initiative to organize the event
in September. Can you tell our audience a little bit
about the company and its ethos and what made you
want to be part of this concept of hosting a
(02:41):
conversation about how we get this right?
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Sure, thanks again for having us. We are passionate about
African safari travel and that is really our expertise. But
through that we have realized that we have a platform
and we have influence and we rarely want to use
that for good. We want travel to be a force
for good, and not in a high pressure way, but
in a way that really for example, looking at our
(03:06):
supply chain and making sure we have a sustainable supply chain.
We've just audited that we're actively engaging with our suppliers
but also using our influence with our thousands of hundreds
of thousands of travelers to shine a spotlight on on
really important topics and so this There are a few
things that we do regularly. There's a few things that
we experiment with and thanks to one of my colleagues, Leaseel,
(03:30):
she co created this event and together just with being
inspired with seeing the documentary and knowing that we have
this platform, was an opportunity to experiment and see if
this is something that we can really share and tell
the story to our international audience of travelers.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
You do tend to have a large number of high
end international travelers who have the disposable income to spend
on this kind of travel and can say to you,
I want a best spoke trip where I want to
see X, Y and Z. And as I said at
the start, that's wonderful that we have people wanted to
come to Africa and spend their tourism money here and
have these experiences respectfully with our bush. But it's got
(04:13):
to be managed so carefully. Lesil to make sure that
they know what they're getting into and how to do
that in a responsible way. Do you want to just
pick up on the thread. I know you believe very
passionately about ensuring that your guests travel informed. How can
you elaborate for our audience on what that means?
Speaker 2 (04:28):
I think in many ways. In the time I've been
doing a lot of this research, I've been connecting with
global partners across the world, and I think in many ways,
the African safari industry is quite advanced because of the
fact that we have ecritical ecosystems alongside vulnerable communities. There
have been lots of large partners and operators and safari
(04:50):
companies that have really paved the way for this. That
sets a beautiful example for the rest of the world.
For us, how we want to be a force for
good and we want to our to travel informed is
depending on where you're at in the journey. Some of
our guests will come to us and say, we really
want to have a particular experience, we want to have
an authentic community interaction, or we want to give back
(05:11):
to this particular We recently had guests that we're going
to Namibia and they wanted to each of their children
to visit an age appropriate kind of school or education
environment that they could give back to after So there
are many different requests. Others just want to have a
good safari and they want to see great animals. And
I think for us, the stance we've taken is to
(05:33):
make sure that the partners that we collaborate with, in
other words, the lodgers, the ngios we have are all
ensuring that their footprint on the ground is minimum and
their impact is maximum. So where the selection process around
our partnerships is what we believe is critical, and that
then kind of flows into the advice that we give
(05:55):
our guests.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Okay, now let's bring Gareth in at this point, because
Gareth is the person in this comp today who has
worked most closely with pangolins themselves and has worked in
the space of looking after pangolins that have been rescued
from traffickers. And Gareth, it's wonderful to have the chance
to chat to you again. Thanks for joining the conversation today.
Can you maybe just start by briefly explaining to our
(06:17):
listeners why pangolins are being poached and what it is
that is making them so highly sought after by poachers.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Thanks Papa hegis on Nasty here your voice again. Yeah.
So locally panglins are used in traditional practices. The main
driver of the trade is the international Asian market for
(06:46):
traditional medicine, so very similar to rhin o'horn, the very
same sort of syndicate around that, and that's obviously were
in Asia. The Asian species have been poached to near extinction.
And what's that done. What that has done is it's
(07:11):
expanded the trade, and it's seen the trade now land
on African.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Soil, right, so they've literally used up what is available
on their doorstep and on our coming here looking for
particularly the scales, and it's such a different difficult one
to enumerate and to count accurately, because panglins are such
a lusive creatures, we don't rarely have a good sense
of how many of them are out there or we're
(07:37):
out there to start with, Gareth, what we do have
to go on is unfortunately tonnage of scales that have
been intercepted, a number of animals that have been rescued,
whether too soon or to whether soon enough or too late,
is another part of the conversation but really, what is
being recovered from poaches and syndicates that have been cracked
is our kind of best indicator of the extent of
(07:58):
the problem, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Yeah, that's right. And if you look over the last
few years, I mean we're talking about tons and tons
of scales that have been intercepted at a lot of
them at the Nigerian borders and out of Central Africa
and that sort of that sort of side, and that
(08:21):
equates into thousands and thousands and thousands of animals. As
you say, I mean, we don't We don't know how
many we had, and we don't know how many we
left we have left, and so you know, it's a
funny thing to think about every single panguin that we
do manage to pull out of the illegal trade, there
(08:44):
is the thought that this could be the last one. Yeah,
we don't. We don't actually know that. And like you said,
there are impossible to find. There are little escape magicians
and yeah, so I mean in terms of doing some
sort of census on them for all intensive purposes, that's impossible.
(09:08):
We will almost certainly never be able to actually get
a figure and say for sure, right, there's so many left,
like I know, I heard a very scary fact the
other day that there's one hundred and twenty Asian leopards left.
We will never know that. With pangolin. We will never
know if we do have potentially the last one in
(09:32):
our hands when it arrives.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
And that is because they are elusive. They live in burrows.
They don't readily emerge from those burrows when there are
noisy people and cars around them in daylight hours. Gareth.
They do occasionally, though, and that's the reason we're having
the conversation today primarily is to talk about how we
manage those interactions when they do gift us with an appearance.
(09:55):
I mean, there's one aspect of interacting with pangolins through
the rehab centers like the world you have worked with
and continue to work with, where you are dealing with
animals that have been rescued from poaches. Some of those
are lucky enough to be strong enough to go back
into the wild afterwards, but not all of them. When
you encounter a panglin in the wild, though, I mean,
I think the awareness of the trade and the awareness
(10:18):
of just how special they are is perhaps raising people's
sort of cognizance of what a rare and unique sighting
it is to have. And as I said at the start,
that's a double edged sword because it then drives demand
to be well. I want my safari to include a
pangolin sighting, which can almost never be guaranteed. Gareth, you're
working very hard though, to ensure that when it does happen,
(10:40):
lodgers and the people who work in them and those
game rangers know exactly what to do to make sure
that that is a safe interaction. Let's talk a little
bit about what that looks like, because I think the
thing I heard the night of the round table which
horrified me the most was your comment that a lot
of people's responses they want to pick it up and
cuddle it and take a selfie with it. And I thought,
you know, nobody in their right mind would think to
(11:00):
do that with a lion cub. Why do they think
it's okay to do it with this wild animal? Do
you get that a lot that that is people's first
response is to actually physically want to interact with.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
Them, So it is it is something that's surprising because,
like you say, you know, you wouldn't expect to go
and want to cuddle a line. I don't know, some
people might, but I think it's predominantly because the only
defense of panglin has is to roll up in a ball.
(11:31):
And you know, that's a very effective response against lions, hyena,
leopard and everything like that, but unfortunately, against a human
it's no defense at all. And I think it's it's
it's quite similar to I think people handle tortoises as well.
People see a tortoise in the wild and they think
(11:52):
it's okay to just go and pick this poor little
animal up. Yeah, I don't think being defenseless. Defenseless yeah,
warrants sort of any sort of interaction like that. And
I think any sort of any wild animal should be
treated as a wild animal, and a panglin especially because
(12:12):
it is they are so easily stressed. They are incredibly
sensitive little beings. They are emotionally sensitive, mentally sensitive, but
also very physically sensitive. So as you said, they do
spend most of their time called up in a very
well regulated, temperature regulated burrow. Panglins are not great at
(12:35):
moderating their body temperature, so though they are nocturnal, they
will come out earlier in winter to avoid colder conditions.
So you know, if they have a prolonged experience of
interaction with someone, say for two hours, where they're not
(12:55):
comfortable to actually move, and they remain either lying flat
at flat on the ground or rolled up in a ball,
those two hours could potentially push that animal into freezing
temperatures at midnight. It's either going to make it mad
dash for the first burrow it confined and not feed,
which has obvious negative effects, or alternatively, it's going to
(13:19):
try and get still get in that foraging time and
be in freezing cold conditions where it's going to be
shivering a lot. That's going to use a lot of energy,
and the sort of ripple effect of that is that
over a period of time it's just not going to
be able to take in enough sustenance, which could have
(13:40):
dire effects on it. So, you know, we think a
very sort of innocent interaction, yeah, could be quite consequential
for the animal itself.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
As you say, even if it's entirely innocent and with
the best of intentions from somebody who genuinely wishes panguins well,
the potential is that you actually have a very negative
impact on them. So, Gareth, how do we manage this
in the Bushfelt setting. You spoke about drawing up guidelines
to distribute to travel operators to make sure they're aware
(14:13):
of the kind of information you've just shared with us.
What sort of other guidance are you giving them about
how to safely experience if you are lucky enough to
have that magical moment of seeing a panglin during a
game drive, what else are you suggesting?
Speaker 3 (14:28):
So there are a number of things to consider when
seeing it. I mean, a panglin gives very very obvious
stress signals. So if a panglin's walking around, it's foraging,
it's moving in sort of zigzag patterns, and its nose
is very active along the ground, and it's looking for
ants and everything, that's not a stressed animal. If a
panglin's lying flat on the ground and not moving, that's
(14:51):
a stressed animal. If a panglin's rolled up in a ball,
that is a very very stressed animal. And our advice
is to move away from that animal as quickly as
possible and give it as much space as possible. So,
you know, I think an important thing is to say
that a lot of this is innocent, and there seems
(15:12):
to be a bit of a knowledge gap and I
don't think people are, especially guides, are going out there
with the intention, of course, to cause any harm to
the animal, but there is definitely And that's one of
the things, you know, that from being able to work
with all these animals that we've rescued from the illegal
(15:33):
wildlife trade, we're now also getting to see into the
world of panglin like we've never before and start seeing behavior,
learning about behavior, learning about the individuals and everything like that,
and understanding these sort of stress signals and being able
to interpret what the animal is trying to tell us
(15:54):
when it is stressed. So a lot of it just
you know, I think a lot of it is just
give it as space, give it its distance, don't infringe
on the animal. Whatever you do, do not pick it up,
do not go take a sealfie with it, and just
respect the animal as you would any other animal.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Absolutely important in for thank you very quickly. There's a
voice note in from Parlo with an important question I think,
which we must squeeze in before we wrap up. Let's
take a quick listen to that, Hyperpa.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
It's Spalal from buck Oven. Papa, could you ask your
guests about pangolins just about a sort of paradox, which
is that there seem to be many many professional game
rangers who've never seen a panglin in the wild themselves,
and yet the poachers seem to be able to get
hold of them so easily. You know, hard does that work?
(16:48):
It would be really nice to hear their comments. Thank
you so much.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Such an important question, thanks, Parlo. Important question, Gareth. Do
you do you know how are the poachers finding them when,
as you've said, they're so loosive, been so difficult to
track even by expert wildlife people.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
So yeah, I mean basically, you know, as well as
a guide might know the area and as might be
able to track an area. First of all, you contract
a pangulin, they are practically possible to track. In the
rural areas You've got, you know, guys out there hurting
(17:26):
their sheep, hurting their cows, and those herds boys and
the rural people know those areas more intimately than any
guide will ever know their reserve that they're working on.
Those guys know every single burrow, they know absolutely every
(17:47):
single and and net termite mound, all of it. So
that's that's how they're finding them. We are seeing it.
We are seeing the trade evolved now where they are
starting to use dogs to actually track them down. And yeah,
I mean it's it's very much a sort of a
(18:09):
time thing. I think as well, if you gave any
really good guide six months to go find a panglin,
there's a very good chance that he would come close
or find one.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Okay, Gareth, thank you for that, and we have to
wrap up here. I want to thank you so much
for your input this afternoon, and just to remind listeners
that if you want to learn more about pangolins, the
group that Gareth is an ambassador for, the African Pangolin
Working Group, is a great place to start. This is
a whole network of organizations and people who are working
(18:42):
towards their survival and their website's got lots of information
that is of interest, which is Africanpanglin dot org. And
then I want to circle back to our second guest
today who's been listening so patiently, and I want no
once to just briefly respond to what Gareth said their
Lisal fund sale of go to Africa. Thanks for waiting,
so Pati.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
Back to you.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Thanks. I could listen to this all day. Thanks Papa,
Gareth and I just the last thing that Gareth said
around the scales and just some of the so as
much as that's kind of increased, but the proaching the
anti poaching units, which we've seen some of the more
advanced ones have started to train their dogs to actually
(19:23):
pick up scales, pick up the sense of scales and
line bone and rhino horn, et cetera, which is amazing.
So it's really great to know that as the kind
of proaches tactics advance, so the anti poaching tactics are
also advancing. But ultimately it's education, right, And as Gareth says,
I think for us too, it's just even for me
(19:45):
in this process, I've learned so much and I look
back on some of my experiences and think, gosh, that
could have been handled differently by some of the guides.
And we look forward to Gareth to working together to
facilitate kind of this education across the industry too.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
It's so important, and I love the teamwork that we
are seeing happening in this space of people who are
all passionate about the same thing, making sure that we
save the panglin species that are left. Pulling together, pooling
resource helping one another with developing guidelines to make sure
that they are interacting with them in the wild. It's
done in a responsible manner, so thank you so much
(20:20):
to everybody involved in that chain ow Thanks to Gareth Thomas,
ambassador for the African Pangolin Working Group and if you
have not seen the movie he features in Pangolin Kulu's Journey,
it is still available to watch on Netflix and I
highly recommend that you give it a look. It is
just the most beautiful story of how these animals can
be saved. Liesel Fanzale, head of Positive Impact at Go
(20:43):
to Africa. Thank you for the effort to be ambassadors
for positive impact on behalf of this species and a
great pleasure to have you with us today as well.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Thanks so much.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Prepare and you can visit their website on go to
Africa dot com. It's the digit to go to Africa
dot com.
In Wonder the World Today, we want to talk about
pangolin tourism and how operators can responsibly deal with visitors
who are coming wanting to see one of Africa's most
elusive and most endangered animals. A little bit earlier in September,
it was my privilege to share a panglin round table
hosted by Go to Africa, during which various conservation experts
(00:22):
and wildlife advocates spoke about the challenge of protecting these
magnificent creatures. I'm not sure how well known their story is.
We've had a few conversations on the show about pangolin poaching,
and if you need a reminder, let me just tell
you there are eight species of pangolin left alive in
the world today, four of which are present in Africa,
and sadly, they are very often described as the most
(00:44):
trafficked mammal on the planet. Efforts to raise awareness of
the poaching and trafficking problem have done a great deal
to raise awareness of the problem and public outcry. There's
a bit of a double edged sword here, because in
heightening awareness of panglins and their plight, we've also driven
an increase in demand to see them. And to have
(01:05):
visitor experiences interacting with them, and that's not necessarily always
a good thing, particularly if those interactions are not being
managed very, very carefully. So I was really encouraged at
that event to hear several of the contributors speak about
the very active role they are taking in drawing up
guidelines to help ensure responsible pangulin tourism and viewing experiences,
(01:26):
and to ensure that their guests, if they are lucky
enough to see one, know how to behave know how
to interact or keep their distance when it's called for,
and not do anything that causes harm to these animals,
even if it is unwitting. It's the last thing we
want that somebody coming wanting to see them, wanted to
be part of the solution, unwittingly causes further damage. Now
(01:47):
to talk to us about this, it's a great pleasure
to have two guests joining us today. With me in
studio is Liesel Fanzel, who is the head of Positive
Impact at GO to Africa who organized that roundtable, and
joining us by a zoom is Gareth Toma, who is
an ambassador for the African Pangolin Working Group. And many
of you will recognize him from the recent Netflix documentary
called Pangolin Kulu's Journey. He's the guy who got to
(02:10):
walk the pangolins in the bush. If you need a
clarification to both of you, thank you so much for
being here this afternoon. Lizel in studio and Gareth via zoom,
you're very welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Thanks for having us.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
With that pleasure and hello again Gareth here much. Sure great.
I'm going to start liedl if I may with you
because it's very interesting to me that a group like
Go to Africa took the initiative to organize the event
in September. Can you tell our audience a little bit
about the company and its ethos and what made you
want to be part of this concept of hosting a
(02:41):
conversation about how we get this right?
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Sure, thanks again for having us. We are passionate about
African safari travel and that is really our expertise. But
through that we have realized that we have a platform
and we have influence and we rarely want to use
that for good. We want travel to be a force
for good, and not in a high pressure way, but
in a way that really for example, looking at our
(03:06):
supply chain and making sure we have a sustainable supply chain.
We've just audited that we're actively engaging with our suppliers
but also using our influence with our thousands of hundreds
of thousands of travelers to shine a spotlight on on
really important topics and so this There are a few
things that we do regularly. There's a few things that
we experiment with and thanks to one of my colleagues, Leaseel,
(03:30):
she co created this event and together just with being
inspired with seeing the documentary and knowing that we have
this platform, was an opportunity to experiment and see if
this is something that we can really share and tell
the story to our international audience of travelers.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
You do tend to have a large number of high
end international travelers who have the disposable income to spend
on this kind of travel and can say to you,
I want a best spoke trip where I want to
see X, Y and Z. And as I said at
the start, that's wonderful that we have people wanted to
come to Africa and spend their tourism money here and
have these experiences respectfully with our bush. But it's got
(04:13):
to be managed so carefully. Lesil to make sure that
they know what they're getting into and how to do
that in a responsible way. Do you want to just
pick up on the thread. I know you believe very
passionately about ensuring that your guests travel informed. How can
you elaborate for our audience on what that means?
Speaker 2 (04:28):
I think in many ways. In the time I've been
doing a lot of this research, I've been connecting with
global partners across the world, and I think in many ways,
the African safari industry is quite advanced because of the
fact that we have ecritical ecosystems alongside vulnerable communities. There
have been lots of large partners and operators and safari
(04:50):
companies that have really paved the way for this. That
sets a beautiful example for the rest of the world.
For us, how we want to be a force for
good and we want to our to travel informed is
depending on where you're at in the journey. Some of
our guests will come to us and say, we really
want to have a particular experience, we want to have
an authentic community interaction, or we want to give back
(05:11):
to this particular We recently had guests that we're going
to Namibia and they wanted to each of their children
to visit an age appropriate kind of school or education
environment that they could give back to after So there
are many different requests. Others just want to have a
good safari and they want to see great animals. And
I think for us, the stance we've taken is to
(05:33):
make sure that the partners that we collaborate with, in
other words, the lodgers, the ngios we have are all
ensuring that their footprint on the ground is minimum and
their impact is maximum. So where the selection process around
our partnerships is what we believe is critical, and that
then kind of flows into the advice that we give
(05:55):
our guests.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Okay, now let's bring Gareth in at this point, because
Gareth is the person in this comp today who has
worked most closely with pangolins themselves and has worked in
the space of looking after pangolins that have been rescued
from traffickers. And Gareth, it's wonderful to have the chance
to chat to you again. Thanks for joining the conversation today.
Can you maybe just start by briefly explaining to our
(06:17):
listeners why pangolins are being poached and what it is
that is making them so highly sought after by poachers.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Thanks Papa hegis on Nasty here your voice again. Yeah.
So locally panglins are used in traditional practices. The main
driver of the trade is the international Asian market for
(06:46):
traditional medicine, so very similar to rhin o'horn, the very
same sort of syndicate around that, and that's obviously were
in Asia. The Asian species have been poached to near extinction.
And what's that done. What that has done is it's
(07:11):
expanded the trade, and it's seen the trade now land
on African.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Soil, right, so they've literally used up what is available
on their doorstep and on our coming here looking for
particularly the scales, and it's such a different difficult one
to enumerate and to count accurately, because panglins are such
a lusive creatures, we don't rarely have a good sense
of how many of them are out there or we're
(07:37):
out there to start with, Gareth, what we do have
to go on is unfortunately tonnage of scales that have
been intercepted, a number of animals that have been rescued,
whether too soon or to whether soon enough or too late,
is another part of the conversation but really, what is
being recovered from poaches and syndicates that have been cracked
is our kind of best indicator of the extent of
(07:58):
the problem, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Yeah, that's right. And if you look over the last
few years, I mean we're talking about tons and tons
of scales that have been intercepted at a lot of
them at the Nigerian borders and out of Central Africa
and that sort of that sort of side, and that
(08:21):
equates into thousands and thousands and thousands of animals. As
you say, I mean, we don't We don't know how
many we had, and we don't know how many we
left we have left, and so you know, it's a
funny thing to think about every single panguin that we
do manage to pull out of the illegal trade, there
(08:44):
is the thought that this could be the last one. Yeah,
we don't. We don't actually know that. And like you said,
there are impossible to find. There are little escape magicians
and yeah, so I mean in terms of doing some
sort of census on them for all intensive purposes, that's impossible.
(09:08):
We will almost certainly never be able to actually get
a figure and say for sure, right, there's so many left,
like I know, I heard a very scary fact the
other day that there's one hundred and twenty Asian leopards left.
We will never know that. With pangolin. We will never
know if we do have potentially the last one in
(09:32):
our hands when it arrives.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
And that is because they are elusive. They live in burrows.
They don't readily emerge from those burrows when there are
noisy people and cars around them in daylight hours. Gareth.
They do occasionally, though, and that's the reason we're having
the conversation today primarily is to talk about how we
manage those interactions when they do gift us with an appearance.
(09:55):
I mean, there's one aspect of interacting with pangolins through
the rehab centers like the world you have worked with
and continue to work with, where you are dealing with
animals that have been rescued from poaches. Some of those
are lucky enough to be strong enough to go back
into the wild afterwards, but not all of them. When
you encounter a panglin in the wild, though, I mean,
I think the awareness of the trade and the awareness
(10:18):
of just how special they are is perhaps raising people's
sort of cognizance of what a rare and unique sighting
it is to have. And as I said at the start,
that's a double edged sword because it then drives demand
to be well. I want my safari to include a
pangolin sighting, which can almost never be guaranteed. Gareth, you're
working very hard though, to ensure that when it does happen,
(10:40):
lodgers and the people who work in them and those
game rangers know exactly what to do to make sure
that that is a safe interaction. Let's talk a little
bit about what that looks like, because I think the
thing I heard the night of the round table which
horrified me the most was your comment that a lot
of people's responses they want to pick it up and
cuddle it and take a selfie with it. And I thought,
you know, nobody in their right mind would think to
(11:00):
do that with a lion cub. Why do they think
it's okay to do it with this wild animal? Do
you get that a lot that that is people's first
response is to actually physically want to interact with.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
Them, So it is it is something that's surprising because,
like you say, you know, you wouldn't expect to go
and want to cuddle a line. I don't know, some
people might, but I think it's predominantly because the only
defense of panglin has is to roll up in a ball.
(11:31):
And you know, that's a very effective response against lions, hyena,
leopard and everything like that, but unfortunately, against a human
it's no defense at all. And I think it's it's
it's quite similar to I think people handle tortoises as well.
People see a tortoise in the wild and they think
(11:52):
it's okay to just go and pick this poor little
animal up. Yeah, I don't think being defenseless. Defenseless yeah,
warrants sort of any sort of interaction like that. And
I think any sort of any wild animal should be
treated as a wild animal, and a panglin especially because
(12:12):
it is they are so easily stressed. They are incredibly
sensitive little beings. They are emotionally sensitive, mentally sensitive, but
also very physically sensitive. So as you said, they do
spend most of their time called up in a very
well regulated, temperature regulated burrow. Panglins are not great at
(12:35):
moderating their body temperature, so though they are nocturnal, they
will come out earlier in winter to avoid colder conditions.
So you know, if they have a prolonged experience of
interaction with someone, say for two hours, where they're not
(12:55):
comfortable to actually move, and they remain either lying flat
at flat on the ground or rolled up in a ball,
those two hours could potentially push that animal into freezing
temperatures at midnight. It's either going to make it mad
dash for the first burrow it confined and not feed,
which has obvious negative effects, or alternatively, it's going to
(13:19):
try and get still get in that foraging time and
be in freezing cold conditions where it's going to be
shivering a lot. That's going to use a lot of energy,
and the sort of ripple effect of that is that
over a period of time it's just not going to
be able to take in enough sustenance, which could have
(13:40):
dire effects on it. So, you know, we think a
very sort of innocent interaction, yeah, could be quite consequential
for the animal itself.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
As you say, even if it's entirely innocent and with
the best of intentions from somebody who genuinely wishes panguins well,
the potential is that you actually have a very negative
impact on them. So, Gareth, how do we manage this
in the Bushfelt setting. You spoke about drawing up guidelines
to distribute to travel operators to make sure they're aware
(14:13):
of the kind of information you've just shared with us.
What sort of other guidance are you giving them about
how to safely experience if you are lucky enough to
have that magical moment of seeing a panglin during a
game drive, what else are you suggesting?
Speaker 3 (14:28):
So there are a number of things to consider when
seeing it. I mean, a panglin gives very very obvious
stress signals. So if a panglin's walking around, it's foraging,
it's moving in sort of zigzag patterns, and its nose
is very active along the ground, and it's looking for
ants and everything, that's not a stressed animal. If a
panglin's lying flat on the ground and not moving, that's
(14:51):
a stressed animal. If a panglin's rolled up in a ball,
that is a very very stressed animal. And our advice
is to move away from that animal as quickly as
possible and give it as much space as possible. So,
you know, I think an important thing is to say
that a lot of this is innocent, and there seems
(15:12):
to be a bit of a knowledge gap and I
don't think people are, especially guides, are going out there
with the intention, of course, to cause any harm to
the animal, but there is definitely And that's one of
the things, you know, that from being able to work
with all these animals that we've rescued from the illegal
(15:33):
wildlife trade, we're now also getting to see into the
world of panglin like we've never before and start seeing behavior,
learning about behavior, learning about the individuals and everything like that,
and understanding these sort of stress signals and being able
to interpret what the animal is trying to tell us
(15:54):
when it is stressed. So a lot of it just
you know, I think a lot of it is just
give it as space, give it its distance, don't infringe
on the animal. Whatever you do, do not pick it up,
do not go take a sealfie with it, and just
respect the animal as you would any other animal.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Absolutely important in for thank you very quickly. There's a
voice note in from Parlo with an important question I think,
which we must squeeze in before we wrap up. Let's
take a quick listen to that, Hyperpa.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
It's Spalal from buck Oven. Papa, could you ask your
guests about pangolins just about a sort of paradox, which
is that there seem to be many many professional game
rangers who've never seen a panglin in the wild themselves,
and yet the poachers seem to be able to get
hold of them so easily. You know, hard does that work?
(16:48):
It would be really nice to hear their comments. Thank
you so much.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Such an important question, thanks, Parlo. Important question, Gareth. Do
you do you know how are the poachers finding them when,
as you've said, they're so loosive, been so difficult to
track even by expert wildlife people.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
So yeah, I mean basically, you know, as well as
a guide might know the area and as might be
able to track an area. First of all, you contract
a pangulin, they are practically possible to track. In the
rural areas You've got, you know, guys out there hurting
(17:26):
their sheep, hurting their cows, and those herds boys and
the rural people know those areas more intimately than any
guide will ever know their reserve that they're working on.
Those guys know every single burrow, they know absolutely every
(17:47):
single and and net termite mound, all of it. So
that's that's how they're finding them. We are seeing it.
We are seeing the trade evolved now where they are
starting to use dogs to actually track them down. And yeah,
I mean it's it's very much a sort of a
(18:09):
time thing. I think as well, if you gave any
really good guide six months to go find a panglin,
there's a very good chance that he would come close
or find one.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Okay, Gareth, thank you for that, and we have to
wrap up here. I want to thank you so much
for your input this afternoon, and just to remind listeners
that if you want to learn more about pangolins, the
group that Gareth is an ambassador for, the African Pangolin
Working Group, is a great place to start. This is
a whole network of organizations and people who are working
(18:42):
towards their survival and their website's got lots of information
that is of interest, which is Africanpanglin dot org. And
then I want to circle back to our second guest
today who's been listening so patiently, and I want no
once to just briefly respond to what Gareth said their
Lisal fund sale of go to Africa. Thanks for waiting,
so Pati.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
Back to you.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Thanks. I could listen to this all day. Thanks Papa,
Gareth and I just the last thing that Gareth said
around the scales and just some of the so as
much as that's kind of increased, but the proaching the
anti poaching units, which we've seen some of the more
advanced ones have started to train their dogs to actually
(19:23):
pick up scales, pick up the sense of scales and
line bone and rhino horn, et cetera, which is amazing.
So it's really great to know that as the kind
of proaches tactics advance, so the anti poaching tactics are
also advancing. But ultimately it's education, right, And as Gareth says,
I think for us too, it's just even for me
(19:45):
in this process, I've learned so much and I look
back on some of my experiences and think, gosh, that
could have been handled differently by some of the guides.
And we look forward to Gareth to working together to
facilitate kind of this education across the industry too.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
It's so important, and I love the teamwork that we
are seeing happening in this space of people who are
all passionate about the same thing, making sure that we
save the panglin species that are left. Pulling together, pooling
resource helping one another with developing guidelines to make sure
that they are interacting with them in the wild. It's
done in a responsible manner, so thank you so much
(20:20):
to everybody involved in that chain ow Thanks to Gareth Thomas,
ambassador for the African Pangolin Working Group and if you
have not seen the movie he features in Pangolin Kulu's Journey,
it is still available to watch on Netflix and I
highly recommend that you give it a look. It is
just the most beautiful story of how these animals can
be saved. Liesel Fanzale, head of Positive Impact at Go
(20:43):
to Africa. Thank you for the effort to be ambassadors
for positive impact on behalf of this species and a
great pleasure to have you with us today as well.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Thanks so much.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Prepare and you can visit their website on go to
Africa dot com. It's the digit to go to Africa
dot com.
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