Sole PhD on the troubled pangolin
Published on: Sunday, April 30, 2017
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THERE’S a silver lining to the pangolin woes in the country: Labuk-hailed Kadazan lass, Elisa Panjang, turns out to be only Sabahan and Malaysian ever to do a PhD on the pangolin with Cardiff University, thanks to the opportunity provided by Danau Girang Field Centre (DGFC), Kinabatangan.
To appreciate it is indeed good news, one must get at least a glimpse on the extent of the bad news.
The bad news is at a staggering US$7,000 per head, wild pangolins – an obscure creature – is being rapidly hunted to depletion as it has become the most trafficked wild mammal in the world, for both its scales and meat!
The spectre of doom is not farfetched, given spectacular news like Vietnamese Customs seizing 6.2 tons of frozen pangolins from Indonesia not too long ago.
Hotspot in Sabah recorded largest seizure
In snippets of bad news, Sabah contributed to 22,000 Sunda pangolins killed in 2009.
Then in December 2011, a newly-formed Special Marine squad seized 178 containers holding 1,068 frozen pangolin worth US$1.26 million – Sabah’s largest seizure of pangolin meat in history – after a wild goose boat chase in the East Coast, making it part of the 23,400 pangolins confiscated worldwide between 2011 and 2013 alone!
Elisa said she‘s not surprised by it.
“Sabah is considered one of the hotspots for smuggling, like a point for our pangolins and also other pangolins from the Philippines forward to Vietnam and China and so for me, enforcement, education and research that we need to do to get more information, are very important,” she said.
One million pangolins killed
In total, IUCN estimated over 1 million pangolins were killed for meat and scales over the last decade.
“I am a member of the IUCN Specialist Group on pangolins so I know this is true… it’s really bad and then in Sabah, despite it being protected, the authorities still find people capturing them at road blocks,” Elisa noted.
But all these known reports are probably just the tip of the iceberg on this mushrooming illegal trade.
“For me, we need to do something about the illegal trade.”
Without tough measures to cut down or shut down demand and effective measures to create pangolin strongholds in their home ranges in Africa and Asia, the survival of this uncharismatic armour-plated termite and ant-eating creature will be lost to a gruesome trade for its meat, foetus included, and scales.
The problem is captive breeding had proven very difficult and breeding in the wild is just one offspring per year, never really enough to replace the population lost at the current rate. Once a species is gone, it’s extinct forever!
To add to the problem, even conservationists tend not to give focus to this solitary, nocturnal creature as they are pre-occupied with bigger, more famous species like the elephants which are being killed at 35,000 per year for ivory and the rhinos being slaughtered at 810 heads per year.
“It is really sad because right now pangolins are unpopular, not many people know about it, people don’t understand them and then we are losing them rapidly while the world still don’t know about them,” Elisa lamented.
Celebrating Sabah’s sole pangolin icon
So amid that bleak news, we celebrate our sole local pangolin PhD icon – Elisa Panjang – and how Danau Girang Field Centre made it happen.
After Form 6 at St Mary’s Sandakan, she did a Diploma in Civil Engineering at Politenik Kota Kinabalu before enrolling at Universiti Malaysia Sabah for a First Degree in Conservation Biology on the pangolin.She said: “That’s when I started to develop a passion for the pangolin.”
So how important is Danau Girang?
She said: “Danau Girang came into the picture when I finished my Masters degree on the ‘Ecology of Sunda Pangolin in Kabili Sepilok’ at UMS.”
“After that I got to thinking that I am actually working on a very difficult species, difficult because it is a rare species and so at UMS there were not many lecturers who wanted to supervise me.”
The day when DGFC Director read her article
Looking back, Elisa said: “When I approached lecturers at UMS to do a PhD on the pangolin, they said it’s difficult because GPS tags are not cheap, funding was thus needed for these very expensive equipment and so they were not really looking at this.
“Similarly, all the other people told me why I wanted to do the pangolin, why not just do a PhD on many animals that have bigger samples? At one stage I even asked myself why am I going after this but in the end, my answer was this is something unique but we don’t know anything about it so we need to study it.”
Without DGFC and its Director Dr Benoit, who clearly understood the importance of Sabah’s Sunda pangolins which really need to be studied and helped, Elisa said her dream for a PhD on the pangolin is out of the question.
“I didn’t know him at the time. What happened was, I wrote an article on the pangolin in conjunction with World Pangolin Day and Dr Benoit read it, emailed me saying I was the only person doing this which was very important to the species.
“He asked me to see him, we talked about it and then we understood that this species is very critically endangered and nobody was doing it and as far as I knew, I was the only person doing it,” she recalled.
“Benoit understood the Sunda pangolin clearly needed help and so he gave me the opportunity to work with Danau Girang and he provided the funding and then what makes me happy is also I am enrolling into an international university (Cardiff University) which for me is a very good opportunity,” Elisa noted.
Elisa agrees with Leona and Farina
So, first, how does she find Benoit?
“On the pangolin, we share the same wavelength and when I started doing my PhD, it’s not really hard to work with him. He is my supervisor but also like a friend. He explained to me how to find funding and then he wanted me to expand my knowledge.
“So I went to Kyoto University for a workshop and training last June at Kyoto University’s Wildlife Research Department, Japan (by virtue of affiliation with UMS & Kyoto for her masters degree) which got work in Sabah, I was trained in lab work on how to identify scales and furs of wildlife as it’s very important to me because pangolins have scales.”
Both fellow local post grad researchers at DGFC like Leona Wai on the otters and Farina Othman on the elephants noted an “open minded” Dr Benoit, but is it true for Elisa?
“Oh, yes, I completely agree, he is very open minded, very helpful in terms of giving leads, not like spoon feeding but likes you to think, helps you do what you want to do,” Elisa said.
So it’s not fair to have been criticised the way he was?
“Absolutely not. In fact, we should really help him, not necessarily praising him but help him so that he can continue to help Sabah,” Elisa suggested.
Helping out with funds
But DGFC even helped provide funds for Elisa. How was that done?
“Yes, successful fund-raising organised by DGFC and Scubazoo at El Centro Café in KK.
I gave a talk, people contributed money for my research because I wanted to buy GPS tags which are very expensive at rm5500 each and we managed to collect half the money,” Elisa said.
But does she need more funds?
“Yes, of course. If I can buy 10 GPS tags and I manage to attach them to 10 pangolins and then try to understand their home range, I think it is really good but that means RM55,000,” Elisa said.
The most trafficked wild life
Elisa said: “Most people will not say I have made a very good choice but to me, it’s a good choice.
By IUCN reckoning, the Sunda pangolin is critically endangered.”
“But let’s talk about the basics first. There are eight species of pangolins – four in Asia, four in Africa and in Sabah we have only one species – the Sunda pangolin.
“The problem is we don’t know their numbers and then it is very important for conservation.
You can see the big issue now is over-hunting and poaching because of the scales. It is one of the most trafficked wild mammals right now but it is difficult because it’s rare and to study rare species, one has to be very patient and not so easily discouraged.
“To be honest, that is my experience. After two years, I had only two encounters with wild pangolins.
We don’t know whether this is because the population is low or whether the methodology is wrong.”
Pangolin signs but can’t find them
Where did she look but couldn’t find any wild pangolin so far?
“My research is divided into forest reserve in Kabili Sepilok and also I am doing in Kinabatangan which is more degraded/fragmented and also in plantations. I found the signs in the forests - the claws, the burrows but then when we do night survey we couldn’t find them.”
No sign of them because they are known to burrow up to 11 feet deep and had gone hiding?
Elisa didn’t think so, saying after being trained for seven years, she is familiar with their habits: “So I know where they are, I tried to look but couldn’t find them and then when I did my interviews with local communities there in Batu Puteh and also elsewhere, they told me compared to 20 to 30 years ago in the 60s to the 90s, they could still see at least one or two pangolins around but now nothing, completely nothing!”
Elisa: It worries me
“That worries me. I think we are losing them, our natural heritage right here in Sabah, the only species found here.
Like what the IUCN Pangolin Specialist Group has been discussing about this, we are afraid that in 10 years we are going to lose them in the wild, looking at all the data on smuggling.
“But that’s what we are doing in DGFC, I am trying to figure out how best is the methodology to assess the population, I am still learning. And when I publish this we all learn. At the moment, it’s v important we do the enforcement and education, working closely together with Sabah Wildlife Department.
I am also the Pangolin Conservation Officer in Danau Girang or a position as Species Management Officer while Farina is SMO on elephants.”
That position takes her to primary and secondary schools in Tambunan, Sandakan, Kinabatangan to talk about the pangolin.
“For example, on February 18, I visited schools to celebrate World Pangolin Day with good success and co curse I join public exhibitions and public talks so here in Danau Girang, they provide capacity building and good opportunities for local students and we become like young scientists to spread conservation intelligence.
“So apart from doing research, DGFC also trains us to be educators and so it’s really good.
Hopefully, I can join Sabah Wildlife Department’s next project – a programme in education on the East Coast so that one day per month we go to schools. That’s me, I don’t want to do only research, I also want to have education,” Elisa said.
The result is raising a future crop of educated local wildlife specialists to manage Sabah’s wildlife species while providing jobs to local communities nearby, such as research assistants or stuff all of whom hail from Kinabatangan who love to work there, according to Elisa.
So is it true that DGFC is just a foreign enclave?
“I don’t think so,” Elisa opined.
“They help us a lot, I mean they are doing something not many locals will like to do, we are already trained graduates and we’ll take away this expertise to manage our own in the future.
They came here to boost us, make us think and enhance our conservation intelligence,” she went on.
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