The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has recently proposed listing seven species of pangolins, the most trafficked mammals on the planet, under the Endangered Species Act.
If finalized, an ESA listing would prohibit the import and sale of pangolins and their parts in the U.S., except for scientific or conservation purposes. It would also open up potential funding for antitrafficking and habitat-conservation efforts, which these mammals desperately need.
“Pangolins are on the razor’s edge of extinction, and we need to completely shut down any U.S. market for their scales,” Sarah Uhlemann, international program director at the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), said in a press release. “There’s no good reason for anybody to ingest any part of a pangolin.”
The seven pangolin species proposed to be listed as endangered include all four Asian pangolin species: the critically endangered Chinese (Manis pentadactyla), Sunda (Manis javanica) and Philippine pangolins (Manis culionensis), and the endangered Indian pangolin (Manis crassicaudata); as well as three African species: the endangered white-bellied (Phataginus tricuspis) and giant pangolins (Smutsia gigantea), and the black-bellied pangolin (Phataginus tetradactyla), considered vulnerable on the IUCN Red List.
The fourth African species, Temminck’s pangolin (Smutsia temminckii), also called the ground pangolin, is already listed as endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.
The USFWS proposal to list the remaining seven species under the ESA comes in response to a 2015 petition and a 2020 legal agreement between the federal agency and various conservation NGOs and animal welfare organizations to determine if a listing is warranted. USFWS said in its statement that it had decided to propose the ESA listing “after reviewing the best available scientific and commercial information.”
“This long-awaited announcement from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is a victory for pangolins,” Jeff Flocken, chief international officer for Humane World for Animals, a U.S.-based animal welfare organization and one of the petitioners to USFWS, said in a press statement.
All pangolin species are listed on Appendix I of CITES, the international wildlife trade agreement. meaning their commercial international trade is prohibited. Pangolins are illegally traded for their scales, which are in demand in Southeast Asia and China, and are also hunted for their meat.
While recent reports indicate a decline in pangolin scales trade and seizures over the past decade, the illegal trade still persists, as indicated by several recent seizures.
The proposed listing is now open for public comments until Aug. 18, 2025, and the comments will be considered before publishing a final rule, USFWS said.
Banner image: A critically endangered Chinese pangolin. Image by Rajib Rudra Tariang via iNaturalist.
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