Their numbers are shrinking in Pakistan faster than anywhere else, sparking the start of a bottom-up resistance, against the odds, to save the animal. On a Saturday afternoon in August 2018, 41-year-old Shaukat Akash was relaxing at his home in Taxila in Pakistan’s Punjab province when he heard people talking over each other in raised voices outside, followed by frequent thuds. Akash stepped outside to find a group of men armed with sticks and spades, standing in a circle and bent over a weird-looking scaly creature curled up in a ball in the middle. Akash told the men to stop beating the animal, and unsure of what the creature was, decided to take it home for its safety. Members of Pakistan Wildlife Foundation (PWF), a nonprofit conservation group, identified the animal as a pangolin over the phone, based on Akash’s description. They took the creature. The next day, after it was observed fit for walking and digging into the earth despite a slight swelling on its right forelimb, it was released in Margalla Hills National Park in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital. It was a life-saving operation that Pakistan’s conservationists are now increasingly trying to replicate to protect the pangolin, identified by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) as the world’s most trafficked animal. | 