【编者按】“守望野生动物”是美国国家地理2019年6月的特别专题，通过3个小专题来呼吁人们保护野生动物。
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He’s the size of a golden retriever puppy and covered with scales.
With his tail stretched out parallel to the ground for balance, Tamuda holds his little arms in front of him like a T. rex.
The caretaker gently guides the young pangolin toward a dirt mound that he starts to break apart with a pick. Look, he encourages Tamuda: ants. Tamuda catches on and begins to eat, his nearly body-length tongue searching the crevices, his long claws mimicking the pick.
After a few minutes of eating, it’s time to move on. Tamuda lumbers a little farther. The caretaker shows him a new ant mound. This time the pangolin isn’t interested. He flops on his side like a toddler about to throw a tantrum. He curls his body around the boot of the caretaker, who bends down and gently tries to peel him off, but Tamuda wants attention.
Looking up into his human’s face, he reaches high, begging to be picked up. The caretaker tries to be strict—he’s supposed to be teaching Tamuda how to fend for himself—but the plea is too much to resist. As any good pangolin mother would do, he lifts Tamuda up and cradles him.
Tamuda’s lesson was taking place at the Tikki Hywood Foundation, a rescue center near Harare, Zimbabwe, where pangolins freed from the illegal wildlife trade by Lisa Hywood and her team recover.
Hywood—a fiery, compact woman prone to alternating between cooing lullabies to her rescues and vociferously condemning the cruelty of man—has rescued more than 180 pangolins since 2012. Tikki Hywood is also home to rescued sable antelope, cows, a feisty goat, and a pair of donkeys named Jesus and Mary. (Joseph is no longer with us.)
Young pangolins like being up high. Until they’re several months old, their mothers carry them on their backs so the babies can observe how to behave. That’s probably where Tamuda was spending most of his time just before poachers snatched him and his mother from the wild. When a pangolin mother is afraid, she rolls into a ball, protecting her soft, peach-fuzz belly and her baby with the armor of her scales. It’s good defense against a lion, but it’s about the worst thing to do when your predator is a human and can scoop you up with bare hands.
Tamuda and his mother came to the rescue center in early 2017. A Zimbabwe border patrol officer caught a man from Mozambique trying to cross into the country with them in a sack. According to the wildlife trade monitoring organization Traffic, an estimated one million pangolins were poached from 2000 through 2013—mainly for their scales, used in traditional medicine. Pangolins are believed to be the most heavily trafficked nonhuman mammal in the world.
Law enforcement officers in Zimbabwe know that when they confiscate a pangolin, they should take it to Hywood. She’s one of the few people in the world who can keep pangolins alive in captivity. They’re sensitive creatures, picky eaters that consume only certain species of ants and termites, a diet that’s very difficult to replicate in captive situations.
But by letting them roam for hours a day across the property with stand-in mothers for protection, Tikki Hywood has helped many pangolins, Tamuda and his mother among them, recover well enough to be returned to the wild.
“Every time someone brings us a pangolin, I wonder if it’s the last one in Zimbabwe,” says Hywood, who founded the rescue center in 1994.
All eight species of pangolins, four in Africa and four in Asia, are in danger of extinction driven by the illegal trade. That’s why Tamuda’s caregiver isn’t being named. He and Hywood worry that if traders know the identities of the caregivers, they might be targeted by criminals who want access to the rescued animals.
Pangolins look like scaly armadillos, but they’re more closely related to bears and dogs. They constitute their own taxonomic order, and if they disappear, there’ll be nothing like them left on Earth.
International trade in the four species of Asian pangolins has been prohibited since 2000. In 2017 a ban on international commercial trade in all eight species went into effect, voted in place by the 183 governments that are party to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), the treaty that regulates cross-border trade in wild animals and their parts.
At least 67 countries and territories on six continents have been involved in the pangolin trade, but the shipments with the biggest quantities of scales have originated in Cameroon, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Uganda, according to an analysis by Traffic. And they’ve mainly been heading to China.
“In the last decade, there’s been a massive growth in intercontinental trade in pangolins, especially their scales,” says Dan Challender, chair of the pangolin specialist group with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the global authority on the status of threatened species. Previously, most pangolin poaching and smuggling occurred within Asia, he says. This shift means that Asian pangolins are becoming difficult to find but that the value of scales makes it worth the extra cost to smuggle pangolins from Africa to Asia.
Pangolins are eaten as bushmeat in western and central Africa and by some indigenous groups in South and Southeast Asia. Their parts also are used in Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa as traditional medicine. And among some people in Vietnam and China, pangolin meat is considered a delicacy. But it’s demand for their scales that’s wiping out the animals.
Typically dried, ground into powder, and put into pills, pangolin scales are used in a range of traditional Chinese remedies, from treatments to help mothers with lactation to relief for arthritis and rheumatism. Scales can be found in medicine markets throughout Asia, including Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar.
In China, where such treatments continue to be sanctioned by the government, more than 200 pharmaceutical companies produce some 60 types of traditional medicines that contain pangolin scales, according to a 2016 report by the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation. Every year Chinese provinces collectively issue approvals for companies to use an average 29 tons of the scales, which roughly represents 73,000 individual pangolins.
China’s pangolins had become noticeably scarce by the mid-1990s, according to some reports, because of overhunting. As demand persisted, Chinese companies continued to make pangolin products, ostensibly by turning to two legal sources of scales: stockpiles amassed from pangolins hunted within China before their numbers crashed and imports brought into the country before the bans went into place.
Pangolin trade records from CITES show that China imported a little more than 16 tons of scales during the 21-year period from 1994 to 2014—not nearly enough to meet the demand from pharmaceutical companies. Furthermore, the provincial governments often don’t verify that businesses are getting scales from stockpiled, rather than recently—and illegally—caught pangolins, says Zhou Jinfeng, director of the China Biodiversity Conservation group in Beijing that has been investigating the pangolin trade. He says he’s skeptical that scale stockpiles in China are big enough to fill companies’ needs more than two decades after pangolins virtually disappeared in the country.
“I don’t buy it,” he says. “After so many years, they still have that many in the stockpiles?”
它的大小和金毛狗宝宝差不多，身上覆盖着鳞片。为了保持平衡，塔慕达伸长尾巴与地面平行，两只短手臂伸向前方，很像霸王龙。
饲育员温柔地引导这只小穿山甲前往一处土丘，并开始用十字镐挖掘土丘。你瞧，他鼓励着塔慕达：有蚂蚁。塔慕达看懂了，开始进食。它伸出几乎和身体一样长的舌头探索裂缝，用长长的爪子模仿十字镐。
吃了几分钟后，该离开了。塔慕达摇摇摆摆地往前走了一点。饲育员带它看了一座新蚁丘。这次塔慕达不感兴趣，它侧身一躺，像个准备开始闹脾气的学步儿，用身体卷住饲育员的靴子。饲育员弯下身，试着轻轻将它拨开，但塔慕达想要讨拍。
它头望着饲育员的脸，前脚伸得很高，恳求抱抱。饲育员努力表现得很严格――他应该要教塔慕达自力更生――但这样的恳求谁能拒绝。于是饲育员跟所有穿山甲好妈妈一样，举起塔慕达把它抱在怀里。
塔慕达的上课地点是蒂基－海伍德基金会，这个救援中心位于津巴布韦哈拉雷市近郊，由丽莎.海伍德和她的团队从非法野生动物交易中救出的穿山甲在这里恢复元气。
海伍德是个性烈如火的娇小女子，一下温柔地哄着她救援的穿山甲入睡，一下又大骂人类的残酷。从2012年至今，她已救了超过180只穿山甲。蒂基－海伍德基金会也收容获救援的黑马羚、牛、一只脾气火爆的山羊，还有一对名叫耶稣和玛丽亚的驴子。（约瑟已离我们而去。）
小穿山甲喜欢待在高处。出生后几个月内母亲都会把它们背在背上，让小宝宝观察应有的行为。塔慕达和母亲被盗猎者从野外抓走以前，可能大多时间就是在母亲背上度过。穿山甲母亲害怕时会卷成球状，以鳞片当作盔甲，保护自己像桃子般毛茸的柔软腹部和它的小宝宝。这样防御狮子很有效，但若掠食者是人类，这大概是最糟的对策，因为人类可以徒手把穿山甲抱起。
塔慕达和母亲于2017年初来到救援中心。津巴布韦的边境巡逻警官抓到一名来自莫三比克的男子，企图带着装在袋子里的穿山甲母子入境。根据国际野生物贸易调查委员会（Traffic）估计，2000到2013年有100万只穿山甲遭到盗猎――大多是为了取得它们的鳞片用于传统医疗。一般相信，穿山甲是全世界遭非法交易最严重的非人类哺乳动物。
津巴布韦的执法官员都知道，只要扣押到穿山甲就该交给海伍德，她是全世界极少数能在圈养环境中养活穿山甲的人。穿山甲是敏感的动物，很挑食，只吃特定几种蚂蚁和白蚁，圈养情况下很难复制这种饮食条件。
但藉由让它们在代理母亲保护下每天在中心漫步几小时，蒂基－海伍德基金会已经帮助很多穿山甲恢复到足以返回野外的状况，塔慕达和它的母亲也在其中。
「每次有人带穿山甲来，我就担心那会不会是津巴布韦的最后一只。」1994年成立救援中心的海伍德说。
穿山甲共有八个物种，四种在非洲，四种在亚洲，都因非法交易而面临灭绝危机。这也是为什么本文中未透露塔慕达的饲育员的名字。他和海伍德担心，如果非法交易者得知了饲育员的身份，觊觎这些穿山甲的罪犯可能就会以饲育员为目标。
穿山甲很像有鳞片的犰狳，但是和熊与狗的亲缘关系比较近。它们构成自己的分类目，如果灭绝，地球上就没有类似生物了。
亚洲四种穿山甲的国际交易自从2000年起便已禁止，2017年针对全部八个物种的国际交易禁令开始生效，这是由濒临绝种野生动植物国际贸易公约（CITES）的183个缔约国所表决通过，野生动物与其身体部位的跨国交易就由这项公约管理。
六大洲中至少有67个国家和地区涉及穿山甲交易，但根据Traffic分析，来自喀麦隆、尼日利亚、塞拉利昂和乌干达的鳞片装运量最大，并且大部分运往中国。
「过去十年间，穿山甲的跨洲交易大幅成长，特别是它们的鳞片。」国际自然保护联盟（IUCN）穿山甲专家小组主席唐恩.察兰德说。IUCN是评价物种受胁状态的全球权威机构。据察兰德说，过去盗猎和走私穿山甲大多发生在亚洲以内，现在这种转变表示穿山甲在亚洲愈来愈难找到，但由于鳞片很值钱，因此以额外成本将穿山甲从非洲走私到亚洲仍有利可图。
西非和中非居民把穿山甲当作野味食用，南亚和东南亚一些原住民族群亦然。迦纳、尼日利亚、南非和撒哈拉以南非洲的其他地方也以它们的身体部位做为传统药材。而在越南和中国，有些人则把穿山甲肉视为珍馐。不过，让这种动物大量消失的，还是对鳞片的需求。
穿山甲鳞片通常会在干燥、磨成粉末后放进药丸，用于一系列的中医疗法，从协助母亲泌乳到缓解关节炎与风湿病等。在越南、泰国、寮国和缅甸等亚洲药材市场都能看到鳞片。
中国政府持续准许以穿山甲鳞片入药，根据2016年中国生物多样性保护与绿色发展基金会（简称绿发会）的报告，两百多家制药公司生产的大约60种中药里含有穿山甲鳞片。中国各省每年准许制药公司使用的鳞片总量平均为26.6公吨，大约代表需要7万3000只穿山甲。
某些报告指出，在滥捕之下，中国的穿山甲在1990年代中期已明显稀少。由于持续有需求，中国的公司继续生产穿山甲制品，表面上是透过两种合法的鳞片来源：穿山甲数量锐减之前在中国猎捕到的存货，以及禁令实行前的进口货。
根据CITES记录的穿山甲交易情形，中国从1994到2014年的21年间进口将近15公吨鳞片，根本不够应付制药公司需求。此外，一直调查穿山甲交易情形的北京绿发会秘书长周晋峰指出，各省政府经常没有查核这些公司是从存货取得鳞片，还是使用近期非法捕获的穿山甲。他说穿山甲在中国消失殆尽已经二十多年了，他很怀疑中国的鳞片存量能满足各公司的需求。
「我不信。」他说：「都已经过了这么多年，他们哪来这么多存货？」
No one really knows how many tons of pangolin scales are being smuggled each year—that’s the nature of the black market. But we do know it’s a lot, and we do know that the biggest shipments are going to China.
In 2017, for example, Chinese customs officials confiscated more than 13 tons of pangolin scales, from as many as 30,000 pangolins—one of the biggest seizures on record. Last year Hong Kong authorities seized 7.8 tons of scales in a single shipment on its way to China.
In all, China accounted for almost 30 percent of scale seizures globally from 2010 to 2015, according to Traffic. Keeping in mind that seizures are believed, conservatively, to represent about a quarter of actual illegal trade, these numbers suggest that hundreds of thousands of pangolins are slaughtered each year. (National Geographic asked several Chinese government agencies for comment and received no response.)
Chinese companies are said to be working to breed pangolins on a large scale so they’ll have a steady supply. According to the China Biodiversity Conservation group, the government as of 2016 had issued 10 licenses to facilities to breed pangolins, ranging from rescue centers to investment companies. Another 20 pharmaceutical companies—along with businesses in Uganda, Laos, and Cambodia—launched a “breeding alliance” in 2014.
The problem is that no one has figured out how to breed pangolins on a commercial scale. “There’s just no way—you cannot satiate demand through breeding,” says Paul Thomson, a conservation biologist and co-founder of the nonprofit Save Pangolins. “Pangolins stress so easily. And they don’t rebound quickly.”
Most pangolins don’t survive more than 200 days in captivity, he says, let alone breed and give birth.
This hasn’t stopped Chinese businesspeople from trying. In 2013 a Chinese woman named Ma Jin Ru started a pangolin-breeding operation called Olsen East Africa International Investment Co. Ltd., in Kampala, Uganda, with a provisional permit from the Uganda Wildlife Authority and, later, with backing from a government-affiliated Chinese foundation. Not long after, a company called Asia-Africa Pangolin Breeding Research Centre was also registered and licensed in Kampala.
Both companies were raided, in 2016 and 2017 respectively, by Ugandan authorities who had grown suspicious that the facilities were serving as cover for the trafficking of pangolins caught from the wild. The license issued to Olsen East Africa, for example, permitted captive breeding, but investigators suspected the companies were capturing and trading pangolins illegally—without a permit.
Another Asia-Africa Pangolin Breeding Research Centre was established, in Mozambique, in 2016 and later raised suspicions among Mozambican wildlife authorities for the same reasons. In China, investigators from Zhou’s nonprofit tried to visit several of the licensed facilities, all of which denied them access.
Keeping pangolins alive in captivity is a gargantuan task. In addition to their unique diet, they require special care because they’re prone to stomach ulcers and pneumonia, usually brought on by stress. Six zoos and a nonprofit in the United States imported 46 pangolins from Togo in 2016, aiming to study the animals under controlled conditions and establish a self-sustaining population. As of early March, 16 had died.
没人真正知道每年走私的穿山甲鳞片有多少公吨，这是黑市的本质。但我们确实知道数量很多，也知道最大宗的运量是送往中国。例如在2017年，中国海关官员没收了11.9公吨的穿山甲鳞片，相当于3万只穿山甲。这是有纪录以来最大的查扣量之一。去年香港当局则是查扣了运往中国的一批鳞片，有7公吨之多。
总的来说，根据Traffic统计，中国几乎占了2010到2015年全球鳞片查扣量的30%。根据保守估计，查扣量大约代表实际非法交易量的四分之一，因此这个数据显示每年遭杀害的穿山甲应达数十万只。（国家地理联系了数个中国政府机构请他们评论，但都未获响应。）
据说中国的公司打算大规模繁育穿山甲以取得稳定供应量。绿发会表示，中国政府截至2016年已核发十张执照给穿山甲繁育场所，从救援中心到投资公司都有。另有20家药厂与乌干达、寮国和柬埔寨的公司在2014年组成「繁育联盟」。
问题是没人知道该怎么以商业化规模繁育穿山甲。「就是没办法……透过繁育无法满足需求。」保罗.汤姆森说，他是保育生物学家和非营利组织「拯救穿山甲」的共同创办人。「穿山甲容易感到压力，也不会很快恢复。」
他说在圈养状态下，大多数穿山甲活不过200天，更别提繁殖和生育。
这并未阻止中国商人继续尝试。2013年，中国女子马金如（音译）在乌干达的康培拉成立穿山甲繁育公司，名为「欧森东非国际投资股份有限公司」，握有乌干达野生动物管理局的临时执照，之后又获得附属于中国政府的基金会的支持。不久后，名为「亚非穿山甲繁育研究中心」的公司也在康培拉登记并取得执照。
乌干达当局分别在2016和2017年突袭检查这两间公司，因为他们开始怀疑这些机构被用来掩护野外猎捕穿山甲的非法交易。比如，发给欧森东非公司的执照是针对圈养繁殖给予许可，但调查人员怀疑他们以非法方式捕捉穿山甲并进行交易――这并没有获得许可。
另一间亚非穿山甲繁育研究中心于2016年在莫桑比克设立，后来因为同样原因引发莫三比克野生动物管理当局的疑心。在中国，绿发会的调查人员试图造访几间有执照的设施，但全都被拒于门外。
要让圈养的穿山甲存活下来是艰钜的挑战。它们除了饮食很独特，也需要特殊照顾，因为容易罹患胃溃疡和肺炎，通常是压力所造成。2016年，美国有六间动物园和一间非营利机构从多哥共和国进口46只穿山甲，目标是在控制条件下进行研究，并建立一个能自行繁衍的族群。到今年3月初，已经死了16只。
Pangolins are not hard to find in Cameroon. They’re for sale at outdoor bushmeat markets, where they lie dead next to monkeys and pythons on folding tables. They’re for sale on the sides of the roads, where vendors hold them upside down by the tails for passing drivers to see. They’re a common enough sight for you to think: None of these people seem to be having trouble finding pangolins, so how close to extinction can they be?
The answer is that we don’t have much of an idea how many there are in the first place. Nocturnal, solitary, and shy, they’re difficult to count. But it’s clear from data compiled by Traffic and other nongovernmental organizations that they’re being consumed in and exported from Cameroon and elsewhere in western and central Africa in alarming numbers.
When photographer Brent Stirton and I went to Cameroon last summer, we called up Angelia Young. A South African living in Yaoundé, the capital, with her husband and their three kids, she was arranging to open Cameroon’s first pangolin rescue center. Young took us to a restaurant in the Bastos neighborhood, home to embassies and expats. She handed us menus. Listed above the couscous, plantains, and green beans were porcupine, antelope, and pangolin.
This was an ordinary menu for any restaurant in the city, Young said. Bushmeat is popular in Cameroon, where many prefer it to meat from domestic livestock. Earlier, when we’d visited a market in a rural town where a young woman was preparing a pangolin dish to sell, I’d asked her why she cooks it.
“Why not?” she’d said. “It’s good.”
We didn’t order pangolin (it’s illegal to hunt, sell, or buy pangolins in Cameroon), but we were curious to see whether the restaurant had it on hand. The cook was happy to oblige, bringing out a platter of small gray frozen bodies on a tray. Playing the curious tourists, we gawked and took snapshots.
Young took us back to her house, which, like all the other homes on her street, was surrounded by a tall, thick wall for security. As we pulled up, I saw a boy in a school uniform, Young’s son Nathan, walking what appeared to be a dog. He was pointing his flashlight at the space between the curb and the neighbor’s wall, keeping an eye on his pet.
When we got closer, I realized that it wasn’t a pooch but a pangolin. The little creature was sniffing and snuffling and scratching the dirt, looking for ants. A pangolin walker, who was supervising the outing, followed close behind, keeping watch over both the animal and the boy. This pangolin was one of a few Young had rescued and was nursing back to health in her house.
“I’m always saving things. Cats, dogs, birds, whatever. I ended up saving four pangolins and not knowing how to take care of them,” she said of her first rescue, in late 2016. “The only person I got to answer the phone was Lisa in Zimbabwe.”
Hywood began sending Young pangolin care packages of medicine and blankets, along with health guidelines for the animals. Their conversations eventually led to the inception of the rehabilitation center Young was preparing to launch—Tikki Hywood Foundation Cameroon.
Young introduced us to eight-year-old Nathan and told him we were going to take a walk to the grocery store around the corner to buy some scallions. We left the pangolin under the walker’s watchful eye, and on the way Nathan talked about how much he loves pangolins and how excited he is to help them. He was clearly proud of his mom.
Next to the outdoor produce stand, a group of Chinese men and women were eating dinner. They greeted us in French, with big smiles. As we began picking over the leafy greens, Young made a small gesture with her chin to the left. Near the side door to the building, behind a low wooden fence, was a chest freezer. On top were several dozen pangolin scales, laid out to dry. Young and Nathan bought some scallions and other vegetables while I milled around to get a better look at the scales, which wasn’t hard: They weren’t hidden.
“Of course it’s shocking to see—it’s in your face,” Young said later. “But for them, it’s nothing. You’ll see it everywhere.”
穿山甲在喀麦隆不难找到。它们在户外的野味市场待售，死去的穿山甲躺在折叠桌上，旁边有猴子和蟒蛇。它们在路边待售。这样的景象如此常见，你不禁心想：这些人要找到穿山甲似乎完全不难，那么它们到底有多接近灭绝？
答案是首先我们对它们的数量不太有概念。夜行性、独居、害羞的特性让我们难以计算它们的数量。不过Traffic和其他非政府组织汇整的数据清楚显示，它们在喀麦隆和西非与中非其他地方被食用和出口的数量很惊人。
去年夏天，我和摄影师布兰特.史特顿前往喀麦隆，致电给安洁莉亚.杨恩。她来自南非，与丈夫和三个孩子同住在首都雅恩德，正准备开设喀麦隆第一所穿山甲救援中心。杨恩带我们去一间餐馆。她把菜单递给我们。列在库斯库斯、大蕉和菜豆上方的菜色是豪猪、羚羊，以及穿山甲。
杨恩说，这是城里任何餐厅都有的普通菜单。野味在喀麦隆很受欢迎，许多人宁可吃野味也不吃家畜。早些时候我们参观村镇的市场，有个年轻女子正在准备穿山甲菜肴，我问她为何煮这个。
「为何不？」她说：「好吃啊。」
我们没有点穿山甲（在喀麦隆猎捕、贩卖或购买都属违法），但很好奇餐厅是否备有穿山甲。厨师乐意配合，用托盘端出一大盘灰色的冷冻小身体。我们假装是好奇的观光客，大惊小怪地拚命拍照。
杨恩带我们回到她家，她的家就像同条街上所有房子一样，围绕着高耸的厚墙以确保安全。我们停车时，我看到一个身穿学校制服的男孩，他是杨恩的儿子纳桑，正在遛一只看似小狗的动物。他拿手电照着路边和邻居围墙之间的地方，同时盯着他的宠物。
我们靠近时，我才发现那不是狗，而是穿山甲。这只小动物正在嗅闻、抽动鼻子、扒抓泥土寻找蚂蚁。有个遛穿山甲的人负责监督这趟外出，他紧跟在后，眼睛不离穿山甲和男孩。这只穿山甲是经杨恩救援后带回家照顾到好的少数几只穿山甲之一。
「我总是在救动物。猫、狗、鸟，什么都救。直到我救了四只不知道该如何照顾的穿山甲。」她描述第一次救援经过，那是在2016年底。「唯一愿意在电话上为我解答的人是津巴布韦的丽莎。」海伍德开始把装着药物和毯子的穿山甲照护包寄给杨恩，并附上穿山甲的健康指南。她们的谈话最后促成杨恩正准备开张的复原中心：蒂基－海伍德基金会喀麦隆分会。
杨恩把我们介绍给八岁的纳森，跟他说我们打算走到街角的杂货店买点青葱。我们把穿山甲留给那位负责遛穿山甲的人照看，一路上纳森说着他有多爱穿山甲，有多兴奋能帮助它们。他显然以妈咪为荣。
在户外的果菜摊旁，一群中国男女正在吃晚餐。他们带着大大的微笑，以法语和我们打招呼。我们开始挑选绿色叶菜时，杨恩以下巴微微作势指向左边。房屋侧门附近有低矮的木头篱笆，后面有个掀盖式冰柜，上头有好几十副穿山甲鳞片放在那边晒乾。杨恩和纳森买青葱和其他蔬菜时，我在附近四处晃，想要更清楚地看到鳞片，这也不难：鳞片没有被藏起来。
「看到它们就在你面前当然很震惊，」杨恩后来说：「但对他们来说没什么。你到处都看得到。」
A major stash of pangolin scales would be smuggled into Cameroon soon, investigators with the Last Great Ape Organization, an NGO, told us during our visit. The group, which helps governments with wildlife law enforcement, had been tracking these smugglers for more than a year and knew that investigators would have a chance to break up this supply chain when the men drove into the port city of Douala with their haul.
Sure enough, right after I left the country, police and wildlife officials intercepted the shipment and arrested six people. The pangolin scales had arrived by truck from the Central African Republic, where it’s likely that traffickers had amassed them from many smaller-scale traders there, as well as from traders in Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The plan, said Eric Kaba Tah, of Last Great Ape, was to drive the shipment to Douala, where the smugglers would sell it up a level on the supply chain. Often, the next destination for the scales would be Nigeria, Tah said, then on to China, Malaysia, or Vietnam.
“More and more we are seeing wildlife products leave the central African subregion, passing through Cameroon to Nigeria, where traffickers believe wildlife law enforcement is not as strong,” Tah said.
It helps traffickers that Africa-to-Asia smuggling routes already exist for other wildlife products. Shipments of pangolin scales have been discovered alongside ivory, hippo teeth, and other illicit animal parts.
The organized criminal networks that move ivory also move pangolin scales, according to the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based research group that focuses on illicit networks, including organized wildlife crime. Such crimes are typically associated with money laundering, tax fraud, illegal arms possession, and other offenses.
有一大批穿山甲鳞片很快就会走私到喀麦隆，非政府组织「最后的巨猿」的调查人员在我们造访时告诉我们。他们协助许多政府执行野生动物法令，追踪这些走私客已有一年多，并知道当这群走私客将货载到港市杜阿拉时，调查人员有机会切断这条供应链。
果不其然，我才刚离开喀麦隆，警方和野生动物官员便拦下这批货物，逮捕了六人。穿山甲鳞片从中非共和国以卡车载来，非法商人可能向当地规模较小的贩子收购鳞片，也向喀麦隆和刚果民主共和国的贩子收购。「最后的巨猿」组织的艾瑞克.卡巴.塔哈说，走私客的计划是将货运到杜阿拉，再从那里卖给供应链的更上一层。塔哈说，鳞片的下个目的地通常是尼日利亚，再运到中国、马来西亚或越南。
「我们愈来愈常看到野生动物产品离开中非地区，经过喀麦隆运到尼日利亚，非法商人认为那里对野生动物法的执行没那么严格。」塔哈说。
非洲和亚洲之间已经存在其他野生动物产品的走私途径，这对非法商人很有利。穿山甲鳞片曾与象牙、河马牙齿和其他非法动物部位同时被查获。据高等国防研究中心指出，有组织犯罪网络不仅运送象牙，也运送穿山甲鳞片。总部位于华府的这间研究中心专研非法网络。这类犯罪通常也牵涉到洗钱、逃税、非法持有武器和其他违法行为。
China is the biggest consumer of pangolin scales, but it doesn’t have to be that way, says Steve Given, the former associate dean of the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine, in San Francisco. He has identified at least 125 herbal, mineral, and animal alternatives in the Chinese medicine pharmacopoeia, depending on what a patient needs to treat. “There’s virtually no reason that anyone needs to use chuan shan jia clinically,” he said, referring to pangolin scales by a traditional name.
Western medicine so far has found no evidence that pangolin scales, which consist of keratin, the same material that makes up fingernails, hair, and rhino horn, have any physiological effects on humans. But traditional medicine texts hold that the scales can be effective at treating imbalances in the body, such as “blood stasis,” a condition that can bring on a stabbing or severe pain and may be associated with menstrual disorders, trouble with lactation, and arthritis.
As long as millions of people turn to traditional medicine for relief—and that number is likely to increase because traditional Chinese medicine is set to become an official part of the World Health Organization’s medical compendium—educating health care providers and patients about alternatives will be an important way to protect pangolins from extinction, Given says.
Back in Cameroon, Young said she was planning to release three pangolins into the wild and invited Stirton and me to come along. Two of the pangolins had been found in a garage, and one surrendered by a woman who received it as a gift. As we bumped along an unpaved road, I thought about the pangolins curled in boxes in the back of the car. They were getting quite a ride. The roads were too washed out to go to the regular release site, so we stopped at an open field instead.
As we walked a few yards into the field, Young warned us to watch out for the biting flies that transmit a parasite that can grow into a worm in your eye. While I worried about that, she set the first pangolin on the ground. It walked into the tall grass and disappeared. We saw the tops of the grass blades rustle a bit—and that was that. Within 15 minutes, the other two pangolins also had been set free. It felt anticlimactic to say the least.
On the return drive, I asked Young about a bushmeat market we’d passed on the way out. It had porcupines for sale, and there were a handful of pangolin scales drying nearby. Wasn’t it likely that the pangolins she’d just released would soon be hunted too?
Yes, she said, it’s very possible. “It’s bittersweet, letting them go. There’s no security.” Nonetheless, she added, it’s a second chance. Maybe they’ll reproduce before they’re caught again, contributing a few more pangolin babies to the ever dwindling population. Every pangolin counts, she said.
中国是穿山甲鳞片的最大消费国，但是旧金山美洲中医学院前任副院长史蒂夫.吉文说，其实没有理由非得如此。他已找出中医药典里至少有125种草药、矿物和动物可替代穿山甲，全看病人需要治什么病。「其实在临床上，没有任何非用穿山甲不可的理由。」他说。
穿山甲鳞片由角蛋白构成，与组成指甲、头发和犀牛角的材料是一样的，西方医学至今找不到证据显示对人类有任何生理效果。但传统医学典籍认为鳞片可有效治疗身体失调，像是血瘀这种会造成刺痛或剧烈疼痛，可能与月经失调、泌乳困难和关节炎有关的症状。
有数百万人求助于传统医疗减轻痛苦，而且这个人数可能继续增加，因为世界卫生组织的医学汇编准备正式纳入中医，既然如此，教导健康照护人员和病患使用替代物，就变成保护穿山甲不致灭绝的重要方法，吉文这么说。
回到喀麦隆，杨恩说她打算野放三只穿山甲，邀请我和史特顿参加。有两只是在一间车库里发现，另一只是有个女子收到的礼物，由她主动交出的。我们在一条未铺砌的道路上颠簸前进时，我想着蜷缩在后座箱子里的穿山甲。这趟车程对它们来说肯定不好受。道路被雨水冲蚀得太严重，我们无法抵达平时的野放地点，于是把车子停在一片开阔的原野上。
走进原野几公尺后，杨恩警告我们要小心斑虻，斑虻传播的寄生虫会在眼睛里长大。我还在担心时，她就把第一只穿山甲放在地上。它走进高高的草丛里，失去踪影。我们看着草叶尖端稍微摇动，然后就没了。15分钟内，另外两只穿山甲也重获自由。感觉有点雷声大雨点小。
在回程的车上，我向杨恩询问刚才路边经过的野味市场，我看见那里有待售的豪猪，旁边还有几只穿山甲的鳞片放着晒乾。她刚才野放的那几只穿山甲，难道不会很快就遭到猎捕？
是的，她说，很有可能。「放它们走是忧喜参半。这里没有安全可言。」但她补充说，这也是一个重生的契机。也许它们会在再次遭到猎捕前繁殖，帮持续减少的族群多生几只穿山甲宝宝。每一只穿山甲都很重要，她说。
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