By Ellyn Kail on February 3, 2021
A sick pangolin receives fluids and has a medical check-up at Save Vietnam’s Wildlife
Pangolins are largely covered in scales made of keratin-the same material found in human fingernails.
“Most people don’t know anything about pangolins, never mind that they are near extinct,” the photographer Justin Mott tells us. He encountered these mammals, believed to be the most trafficked in the world, while visiting Save Vietnam’s Wildlife in Cuc Phuong National Park as part of
Kindred Guardians, a long-term project about exploited animals and the humans who help them.
As a wildlife photojournalist, Mott has witnessed the plight of multiple species, but nothing could have prepared him for the pangolins. “The pangolin issue is easily the most underrepresented, and sadly, I feel it’s also the most pressing and dire,” he says. “They are overlooked simply because a lot of people don’t even know what they are. To many, they aren’t as cuddly or majestic as other animals in need, but I find them adorable.