Pangolin Smuggling Continues in China Despite Trade Ban (Corrected)

China seizes tons of pangolin meat and scales each year as it cracks down on the nation’s appetite for the threatened species, but it won’t disclose where those materials go.

Though global trade in pangolins has been banned since 2016, China’s demand for the animals, prized for their meat and the scales used in traditional medicine, has not slowed even as legal supplies of the creature have dwindled.

Now environmental advocates are suing to divulge where those seized animals and scales eventually end up.

“Every year, there are a large number of seizures,” Sophia Zhang, a researcher for the China ...