Quang Tri police save nine trafficked pangolins (Photo: laodong.vn)

The pangolins, weighing 34.9kg in total, were found in a car on December 17.

Nguyen Thi Thuy, a 50-year-old resident in Khe Sanh town of Quang Tri’s Huong Hoa district, was one of the two persons on the vehicle. Thuy said she had bought the animals from some ethnic minority people in Huong Hoa and hired driver Dinh Van Thai to transport to the province’s Dong Ha city to sell.

The pangolin is one of the most trafficked mammals in the world.

Sunda pangolins are listed in group 1B of Vietnam’s Red Data Book, which means they are in danger of becoming extinct and are 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 in Vietnam are declining sharply.

In the IUCN Red List updated in July 2019, the number of species classified as “near threatened” and above in Vietnam is 700. Surveys in 2016 also proposed 1,211 species, including 600 plant and fungus species and 611 animal species, be included in the Red Data Book, much higher than the 2007 assessment./.VNA

Vietnam spends big money to preserve endangered pangolins

Around VND85 billion will be spent to conserve pangolin species under the emergency action plan for the conservation of pangolin species in Vietnam in 2020-2030, to be submitted to the Prime Minister.