Since the outbreak of Coronavirus, China has banned the sale of wild animals for food in the market. China has also cracked down on animal smuggling.
In the course of helping to curb Coronavirus spread in the country, China removed pangolin body parts from the official list of traditional medicines in June and raised the animals protected status to the country’s highest level due to its dwindling numbers.
According to some studies , it is suggested that the scally creature may have been the intermediate host that tramsmited the coronavirus to humans when it first emerged at a market in Wuhan in 2019.
For these reasons, a court in China recently jailed 17 people for smuggling pangolin scales worth 28 million US Dollars from Nigeria to China.
According to the Intermediate People’s Court in Wenzhou, the gang was convicted , on Tuesday, of importing 23 tonnes of scales between 2018 and 2019.
Twoen identified Nas masterminds were sentenced to between 13 and 14 years in prison while the remaining others were given jail terms ranging from 15 months to 12 years.
In December, the country said it jailed a network accused of running it’s biggest ever ivory smuggling ring, which moved elephant tusks worth millions of dollars from West Africa ,into the mainland’s domestic market.
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