21st February World Pangolin Day

World Pangolin Day happens on the third Saturday of every February, falling on 21st February this year. Pangolins play a critical role in their ecosystems, providing the Earth with all-natural pest control and are fantastic soil tenders simply through their everyday behaviours.

This is a day to raise awareness for pangolins, the world’s only scaled mammal and the most illegally traded mammal in the world. The pangolin is also known as a scaly anteater and resides in Africa and Asia. All eight species of pangolins are in danger, and the two most-endangered pangolin species may become extinct within ten years. mammal. Their scales serve as armour to fend off predators, but unfortunately, these scales can do nothing to protect them from the biggest threat to their existence: humans. 

I have written about pangolins before and how I first learned of their existence so use the search bar to read these blogs. It is much easier to introduce them to students now as there are so many more good nonfiction books about them, such as this one, part of a series which is popular in our library.

 

Others to look for:

And a new story:

31st December Pangolins

I'm on holidays and enjoying having time to read all sorts of things I don't usually have time for like the newspaper. Today in the Sydney Morning Herald (page18 in an article by Lindsay Murdoch), I read something alarming about pangolins, an animal I first met in a wonderful picture book by Bert Kitchen called Tenrec's Twigs. This story is set in Madagascar and has an amazing array of obscure animals, supposedly native to there. A friend visited Madagascar recently and I told her to be sure to see a tenrec and a pangolin. Well she saw a tenrec, but not the pangolin. And reading this today I wonder if that is why.
" Among the environmentalists' biggest concerns in South-east Asia is the pangolin, a scaly aardvark-like mammal that is the inspiration for Pokemon's Sandlash, a character adept at battling foes. The real-life ant-eating and nocturnal pangolins have the dubious distinction of being the most poached animal on Earth...More than 100,000 of the shy and near-sighted animals are captured every year across Africa and Asia."




The UN's Convention on International Trade and Endangered Species (CITES) has banned global trade in pangolins in the hope that they do not become extinct, a good reason too, to ensure that the students we teach know about them. I bought these two books for the library, so that when I share Tenrec's Twigs I can offer the children more to read. Not a lot, but a start without having to look through an index in a general animal  nonfiction book.