Good news: Trade ban placed on world's most trafficked animal – Pangolin!

New Delhi: In February, 2016, it was reported that Pangolins face the threat of extinction due to illegal trade and poaching.

Around the same time, TRAFFIC India – a division of WWF-India – also stressed on the need to save these creatures.

Also known as scaly anteaters or trenggiling, pangolins are the world's most heavily trafficked animals owing to their meat, which is considered a delicacy among several communities in some countries as well as their scales, which are used in traditional medicine.

Now, there's finally some good news for the pangolin population! A total trade ban on all pangolin species has been put in place at the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) summit in South Africa in an attempt to secure the future of these armor-clad mammals.

As per Science Alert, a bloc of 182 nations at CITES voted almost unanimously last week to protect pangolins with the ban, covering the Asian and African countries where the creature lives. Both its meat and its scales are in high demand in China and Vietnam.

The trade ban, which is the most severe type of regulation enforced by CITES, covers all eight species of pangolin: four from Asia (Indian, Philippine, Sunda, and Chinese pangolins) and four from Africa (giant, tree, ground, long-tailed pangolins).

Two out of eight pangolin species are listed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, two are considered endangered, and four listed as vulnerable.