Known as the guardian of the forest, this secretive mammal is found across the Indian subcontinent. Today, even though the pangolin — better known as the scaly anteater — is listed under Schedule 1 of the Wildlife (Protection) Act of 1972, it is being hunted, poached and eaten to extinction. Traffic, an international wildlife trade monitoring network, has estimated that during the period 2009–2017, only 5,772 poached/illegally traded pangolins were intercepted. Wildlife experts believe that these estimates are wildly conservative because pangolins are the most illegally trafficked mammal species in the world. Poached and sold in China and Southeast Asia,