Conserving Pangolins from a Distance

I first learned about the terrible trafficking of pangolins in 2017 through a BBC documentary. It began with African pangolins: heartwarming stories of conservation efforts side-by-side disheartening accounts of poaching. They are, as the documentary’s title goes, “The World’s Most Wanted Animals.” Conservationists desperately want to save them; poachers desperately want them kill them.

From Africa, the documentary proceeded to follow conservationist Maria Diekmann to Thailand, China, and Vietnam, where pangolins are in high demand. In Vietnam, she visited Save Vietnam’s Wildlife, a conservation center working tirelessly to save pangolins from traffickers and hunters. That’s where the documentary hit home, because I come from Vietnam. Something in me started to shift—a perspective and a conviction. I began to form a distant connection to pangolins and explore how this alternative perspective could transcend those narratives of exploitation and animal trafficking to arrive at a space of “respectful distance”—a unique form of companionship.

At the Edge of Extinction

Pangolins are nocturnal mammals with scaly bodies, native to both Asia and Africa. Their name originates from the Malay word pengguling, meaning “one who rolls up,” because, when threatened, they curl into a ball, exposing only their hard scales. This self-defense mechanism makes them extremely vulnerable to humans. It is easy to simply pick them up and put them in a bag.

In China and Vietnam, the pangolins’ keratin scales—made of the same protein found in our nails—are thought to have medicinal value. Their meat, meanwhile, is a luxurious delicacy.

In 2021, a total of 23.5 tons of pangolins and their body parts were trafficked, contributing to the estimated one million pangolins hunted over the past decade.

There are eight species of pangolins around the world. They have been here far longer than Homo sapiens. They have evolved to protect themselves from predators, but they are not quick enough to fend off humans. Now all of them—all eight species—are on the brink of extinction.

In his philosophical and ethical exploration of extinction, Thom van Doreen focuses on how it affects not just individual species but entire communities—ecosystems and (human) cultures. He shows extinction to be a deeply entangled social, ethical, and ecological event, not merely a biological process.

Van Doreen also emphasizes that extinction can cause grief. But to him, grief over lost species should translate into ethical commitments to conservation. Thinking back, perhaps that’s how I channeled my grief.

From Grief to Commitment

I have spoken to climate activists, biologists, and conservationists, listened to their stories of how they had come to dedicate their lives to the well-being of our planet. For most, their dedication stems from being close to nature as a child. I was not. I was born and raised in a built-up city. But the injustice done to pangolins was a wake-up call for me. I was moved to both anger and grief.

I had been living in the United Kingdom for quite some time when I watched that BBC documentary, so the pangolins Diekmann visited in Vietnam were thousands of miles away from me. Yet, I felt strangely and deeply connected to them.

In one scene, Diekmann visited a Vietnamese restaurant’s storage where orphaned baby pangolins, scales still pale and soft, lay curled up on top of each other, many in bags, others on the floor, lifeless and hopeless. Seeing them, I felt as though part of me, too, was lost with them.

Donna Haraway explores a particular mode of kinship: “oddkin.” The term refers to unexpected and unconventional multispecies relationships that stem from shared obligations to live together in ways that are sustainable, just, and mutually beneficial. Haraway specifically draws on our inherent interdependence with other species to emphasize our responsibility for them. After all, the human body is made up of only about ten percent human cells and ninety percent microbial cells, including bacteria, viruses, fungi, and archaea.

Oddkin is a different sort of companionship, one not tied to proximity and intimacy, and not necessarily by love in the same way we would love our pets, but by moral duty.

Kinship from a Distance

Pangolins are my oddkin, my companions, and have been so for a long time.

I often find myself overwhelmed by ecological and political crises. It is easy to despair and lose hope. At those moments, I think about pangolins. They remind me how my environmental care started, how I began to pay closer attention to the more-than-human worlds around me as I seek to learn more about them—and how I let that knowledge reshape my lifestyles, how I let it overwhelm me. I feel humble in their presence and deep gratitude. Through my writing, I’ve become more vocal about their power, beauty, and vulnerability and the urgent need to preserve them. For all these reasons, pangolins hold a special place in my heart, and I cannot abandon them. Thinking about them gives me strength and both anxiety and comfort; anxiety because I am worried about their future, comfort because I know they are still here.

My oddkin with pangolins is mediated and materialized through a screen. It is thus characterized by a kind of “respectful distance,” a term I borrow from my friend, Valentina de Riso. This allyship-through-distance reminds me of Native Hawai‘ian activist Haunani-Kay Trask’s discouragement of Hawai‘ian tourism. Waves of tourism, coupled with the presence of the colonial state, further exacerbate the commodification of Hawai‘ian culture and identity and the displacement of Hawai‘ian people from their ancestral land and sea. She writes: “If you are thinking of visiting my homeland, please do not. We do not want or need any more tourists, and we certainly do not like them.” I wonder, would my proximity do more help or harm to the pangolin?

Valentina de Riso argues for a way of speaking, understanding, and relating that does not claim absolutism over any subject, but leaves room for unintelligibility and impenetrability. Drawing on Stó:lō writer Maracle, she emphasizes that total knowledge risks creating the condition for colonial assimilation, whereas incompleteness and unknowing afford space for equitable coexistence between Indigenous peoples, settlers, and other-than-human beings. These concepts challenge and prevent anthropocentrism and cultural and racial hierarchy.   

Thus while Trask speaks to the value of physical distance, Maracle draws attention to epistemological distance. Both are necessary to foster a sense of respect and humility. When one thinks of habitat destruction caused by deforestation, agriculture, urbanization, and resource extraction, one thinks of the ruthless invasion of the human into nonhuman space. When one thinks of the killings of humans by wild animals and of infectious diseases, one thinks of boundaries violated, of too much proximity and intimacy, of humanity’s hubris where it believes it could control and rule over the more-than-human.

Considering this, I wonder whether the respectful distance I have with pangolins might be what is necessary in today’s world. If I want them to be my companions for a long time to come, to continue holding importance to me and give me energy and comfort when I need it, I must keep away from them, respect their homes, and establish respectful boundaries. Pangolins are close to me in the sense that they are always in my mind and heart, but they are physically far away and should be so.

Coming Home

The first time I saw pangolins in real life was in 2022 when I travelled to Vietnam after COVID-19. The place I saw them: the conservation center from the documentary, Save Vietnam’s Wildlife. Through the protective pane of glass, I could see them curled up into balls, sleeping. You could probably imagine how I felt at that moment. Seeing the animals that changed me, that have stayed with me ever since that documentary, was precious.

I also met conservationists, biologists, veterinarians, and park rangers committed to saving these animals. From them, I heard first-hand the extent to which pangolins were affected by the illegal wildlife trade.

I revisited the Save Vietnam’s Wildlife again in 2024. This time, one of the pangolins was awake. A park ranger who showed me around that night shared that her two front limbs were amputated upon rescue because of an infection in captivity, and to that day, she still had in her more than eleven bullets. Under the torch light, the pangolin stood up on her back legs, looking straight at us. I noticed her missing forefeet. I was stationary for a while, trying to digest the stories, trying to comprehend them all. While many of the rescued pangolins were lucky enough to be released back into the wild, all those that stayed in the center had to stay because the permanent injuries they got prevented them from living a normal life in their true homes.

Potawatomi botanist and author Robin Wall Kimmerer writes that if we saw a maple as a person and our kin, we would think twice when we take up the chainsaw. What happens if we start thinking about the nonhuman—near or far—as very much part of the intricate web of life upon which our survival depends, all as persons trying their best to make a small, positive contribution to the health and well-being of our shared planet?

Pangolins, amongst million other species on Earth, are vital to our ecosystems. Their appetite for insects helps regulate insect populations, and through digging, they help turn and aerate the soil, while their abandoned burrows often become shelters for other species.

How we feel and think influences what we do. Our perception of nonhuman entities directly impacts the choices we make and the behaviors we display towards them. My list of nonhuman kin has grown since I learned about pangolins. I hope yours will, too.

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Featured image: A pangolin rescued from illegal wildlife trade. Photo by WildlifeConservationist, 2023.

Dr. Trang Đặng is a specialist in contemporary climate fiction and cultural theory, currently serving as a Visiting Lecturer in Art and Media Technology at the University of Southampton. Her research explores narratives of coexistence between humans and nonhumans, employing an interdisciplinary approach that blends literary studies, philosophy, biology, and geology. She recently published her first monograph titled New Weird Fiction and the Anthropocene: Jeff VanderMeer and Ecological Awareness (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025). Website. Bluesky. Instagram. Contact.