The pangolins, weighing 34.9kg in total, werefound in a car on December 17.
Nguyen Thi Thuy, a 50-year-old resident in KheSanh town of Quang Tri’s Huong Hoa district, was one of the two persons on thevehicle. Thuy said she had bought the animals from some ethnic minority peoplein Huong Hoa and hired driver Dinh Van Thai to transport to the province’s DongHa city to sell.
The pangolin is one of the most traffickedmammals in the world.
Sunda pangolins are listed in group 1B ofVietnam’s Red Data Book, which means they are in danger of becoming extinct andare protected from being exploited or used for commercial purposes.
According to the World Wide Fund for Nature(WWF), Vietnam has become a “hotspot” of wildlife poaching and trafficking.Statistics show that the number of wild species and their populations inVietnam are declining sharply.
In the IUCN Red List updated in July 2019, thenumber of species classified as “near threatened” and above in Vietnam is 700.Surveys in 2016 also proposed 1,211 species, including 600 plant and fungusspecies and 611 animal species, be included in the Red Data Book, much higherthan the 2007 assessment./.