A concerned citizen turned over one adult mother and one baby male pangolins to the Palawan Council for Sustainable Development Staff (PCSDS) in Puerto Princesa City, Sunday, June 28.
Antonio Cuino, a resident of Barangay Luzviminda in Puerto Princes reported that he and his father were on their cornfields at around six in the morning when they saw the pangolins crawling on the vegetation in the area.
His wife reported it to PCSDS-Wildlife Traffic Monitoring Unit (WTMU), who immediately went to the scene.
Cuino said he caught the pangolins in perfect health condition because he knew some people might take advantage of the critically endangered animals due to their value in the illegal wildlife trade. According to the PCSDS Facebook page, Cuino said he pitied the pangolins as they looked vulnerable, so he turned it over to the group so that they can be properly taken cared of.
The pangolins are listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and by the Palawan Council for Sustainable Development under PCSD Resolution No. 15-521.
The pangolin scales are widely trafficked for their scales, where some Asian countries used it as traditional medicine believed to cure diseases and ailments.
You might want to read:
– Nearly 900,000 pangolins trafficked in Southeast Asia: watchdog
– Pangolins of Palawan
– Wildlife traffickers are putting up fake zoos on social media to sell endangered animals
