Thank you for helping us to save pangolins
Update: as you can see from the photo and videos below, Pangopup continues to thrive in our care. A huge thank you to all the supporters whose generosity helped us to reach our target! This support allows us to give Pangopup, and other pangolins just like her, the best chance at a life in the wild – where they belong.
All of the pangolins we care for have been rescued from the clutches of wildlife traffickers. They’ve suffered so much – when they arrive at our door they’re often exhausted, dehydrated and carrying life-threatening injuries.
This was the case when a tiny baby pangolin came to us with her mother. Sadly, stress had caused the mother’s milk to dry up and our team had to make the tough decision to separate the baby from her mother to try and save her. We’re hoping to release the mother soon, while the baby remains in our care.
Affectionately called ‘Pangopup’ by our team, she was only a few weeks old and weighed just 400 grams. Pangopup needed milk every four hours for a few months, until she slowly learned to dig and find ants to eat. For a while, we continued to supplement her ant diet with milk – but she’s now growing up fast and capable of foraging for all the ants she needs!
Pangopup recently gave us a big scare when she got very sick with a tickborne infection. Our team was able to treat her and thankfully she pulled through to make a full recovery. She now weighs more than 10 times what she did when she came to us!
Pangolins don’t usually do so well under human care – as far as we know, this is the first infant pangolin to be hand-raised in Malawi. We desperately need your support to continue providing this round-the-clock care to pangolins in need.
Pangopup remains under our team’s watchful eye but is learning every day to become more and more independent. We hope we’ll be able to release her into a life in the wild in the future.
Please help us give pangolins like Pangopup another chance at life in the wild, where they belong.
HOW YOUR SUPPORT COULD HELP
£5 could pay for an infant pangolin to be bottle fed ten times.
£15 could buy a headlamp to help monitor a pangolin while it forages at night.
£25 could pay for a day of medication for a pangolin needing intensive care.
£50 could provide national park staff with critical supplies and equipment to care for pangolins.
£100 could buy a heat lamp to keep young or sick pangolins warm during critical rehabilitation.
£500 could cover food costs for all the animals at our sanctuary for a week.
Pangolins are now threatened with extinction.
We’ve lost a million pangolins over the past decade, while global populations have declined by 80% in the last 20 years.
Pangolin numbers are being decimated to satisfy demand in Asia, where their meat is considered a delicacy and their scales are prized in traditional medicine – despite there being no scientific evidence for their efficacy.
Pangolins provide valuable ecosystem services by controlling pest insects while their burrowing improves the health of the soil and, in turn, supports rural farming communities.
Read our Protecting Pangolins issue brief to learn about the scale and nature of the illicit pangolin trade as well as government-led initiatives to disrupt trafficking networks – and return the victims to the wild.
Our team works tirelessly to rehabilitate and release pangolins back into the wild, where they belong. Last year we successfully released 17 pangolins. Now we need your help to continue our work.
If we don’t act now, pangolins may disappear forever.
Thank you for giving pangolins like Pangopup
another chance at life in the wild, where they belong.
Media: B. Hintz, A. Harwood, C. Bentley, V. Curr Smith