A Chinese Ship Carrying 11 Tons of Endangered Pangolins Crashed into a Protected Reef

That headline is a real doozy, but what else would you expect for what is undoubtedly one of the biggest single "fuck you, nature" moments in recent history? Let me just reiterate: a Chinese vessel crashed into a protected coral reef in the southwestern Philippines, which is bad enough. But when the vessel was boarded, things got insane: the ship contained about 11 tons worth of highly-illegal pangolin meat.

Where to start? According to the AP, the vessel ran aground on reefs in the Tubbataha National Marine Park, which contains a marine system so diverse and precious that it's a UNESCO site, on April 8. That UNESCO status isn't doing much to protect the reef, it seems: the Philippines is still dealing with the aftermath of a US warship haphazardly sailing directly into the reef in January.

As if smashing up a reef that's home to over 1000 individual species wasn't already terrible—ships crashing into Tubbataha is such a common problem that is has its own section in the marine park's Wiki entry—the Philippine Coast Guard found 400 boxes full of frozen pangolins on board the ship, which each reportedly contained between 25 and 30 kilos of the endangered anteaters.

Pangolins are highly prized both as a delicacy and because it's thought (incorrectly) that their scales have medicinal qualities. They're the biggest mammalian victims of the illegal wildlife trade, and despite being both the only extant mammals with scales as well as phenomenally cute, they're disappearing at an incredible clip. They've been hunted to near extinction in Asia, with tens of thousands of individuals estimated to be traded every year.

"It is bad enough that the Chinese have illegally entered our seas, navigated without boat papers and crashed recklessly into a national marine park and World Heritage Site," WWF-Philippines CEO Jose Ma. Lorenzo Tan said in a release. "It is simply deplorable that they appear to be posing as fishermen to trade in illegal wildlife. Should the carcasses check out as Philippine pangolin (Manis culionensis), we can be sure they were being smuggled out of Palawan. In which case, the full force of the Philippine Wildlife Act should be applied.”

The 12 fishermen detained face up to 12 years in prison and $300,000 in fines for poaching charges, with additional charges likely to be brought for possession of the pangolin meat, not to mention whatever charges will be brought for crashing into the reef.

This story is phenomenally face palm-worthy, but its absurdity just stands to highlight the pervasiveness of the illegal wildlife trade, which is worth tens of billions of dollars a year worldwide. For every ivory poacher and rhino horn smuggler, there's also a guy wandering through the airport with a loris in his underwear and pangolin smugglers posing as fishermen.

The wildlife trade is not simply a localized problem for a couple of endangered species; it's grown to infiltrate every trade route, in real life and online. While it's good to see that this particular crew got busted, arresting every smuggler isn't feasible, and even if it was, arrests don't bring poached animals back to life. As always, the way to kill the market is by killing demand, which means convincing people that consuming pangolin scales isn't a viable option. If demand isn't quelled, pangolins will disappear. It's as simple as that.