The Pangolin Reports: Podcasts
Two great audio productions in English and Chinese, and an extensive interview
Criminal syndicates in Africa and Asia are working together — and competing — to meet the seemingly insatiable demand for pangolins in China and other markets.
Over the past year, more than 40 journalists in 15 countries and territories have conducted a joint investigation on how illegal pangolin trafficking is leading the species to become extinct.
Read our report here, and keep following this newsletter for updates on the trade. We’re planning to cover other environmental issues in Asia and elsewhere. More on this soon, also on this newsletter.
If you’re a journalist interested in joining our environmental reporting collaborations or want to support journalists doing this important work, get in touch by responding to this email.
A newborn pangolin is being manually fed in the ESRI’s First Aid Station. Credit: Yu Chih-Wei / The Reporter, Taiwan.
The reports on the coronavirus links are probably on everyone’s minds right now. Our colleagues in mainland China, Hong Kong, the United States and elsewhere are looking into the fallout of the claims that appear to link Malayan pangolins to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus.
Evidence is still far from clear. We do have some additional information but want to be very careful with any claims we make. We will share more information here as soon as we can corroborate or refute claims with the help of scientists.
A truck near the Burmese-Chinese border. Credit: Patrick Boehler
Today, we’re extremely proud to share episode one of Sustainable Asia’s podcast series on the Pangolin Reports. Executive producer Marcy Trent Long and her team worked with our reporters Xu Jiaming and Tin Htet Paing as they retraced pangolin smuggling routes in Myanmar.
Listen to the first episode on their site, Pocket Casts, Spotify, iTunes, or on your favourite podcast platform. Transcripts are hosted by our friends at China Dialogue, in English and in Chinese.
The next weekly episode is scheduled for coming Friday. You’ll hear more on our reporting from colleagues in Indonesia and Nepal.
The shop display in Yangon has a sign that says, “Pangolin scales, freshly ground on site.” They also offer to pulverize the scales on site.
We’re also very proud to be featured on 故事 FM (StoryFM), a hugely popular Chinese-language podcast that’s often compared to “This American Life” in the U.S. in terms of audience, reach and content. The episode is based on Jiaming and Tin’s reporting in Myanmar.
You can listen to the episode on their site, Pocket Casts, Spotify, iTunes, WeChat or on your favourite podcast platform.
Finally, Hawaii Public Radio released an extensive two-part interview with our managing editor, Patrick Boehler, as part of their Helping Hand series. You can listen to part one here, and part two here. Each episode is about 10min long. They will give you an overview of what we’ve found and what we plan to do next.
That’s it from us for today. Thank you for reading and have a great weekend.
Here are our previous newsletters:
Introduction, Q&A, China, Cameroon, Nigeria, Malaysia, Thai-Malaysian border, Indonesia, Philippines, India, Nepal, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Taiwan, China again, our IJNet profile, the investigative storybook in Malaysia, a two-part report from Palawan, our latest report from Myanmar, local editions in Indonesia and Belgium, and insights into a syndicate.