Namibia’s environmental organizations have embarked on an outreach initiative to protect pangolins following a marked increase in illegal capture, killing and trade of pangolins to international markets.
The Namibian Chamber of Environment (NCE) Chairperson Chris Brown in a press statement issued on Thursday said in response to the growing pressure on pangolins, they had embarked on the initiative to inform the country about the precarious status of this animal and to ask the public to help stop the illegal trade.
“We need a collective national effort to tackle the problem of incentivized illegal trade of pangolins to international markets,” Brown stated.
Also involved in this initiative are the Ministry of Environment and Tourism and Namibia’s communal conservancies.
Namibia is host to only one of four pangolin species in Africa, one of eight in the world.
Illegal pangolin trafficking is so common that all the eight species creatures are categorized as threatened under the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red Data listing. Enditem
Source: Xinhua/NewsGhana.com.gh
