Let every scale count

Pangolins around the world are highly threatened due to demand for their scales as traditional medicine ingredients in the Far East. Namibia's only pangolin species – the Temminck's pangolin – is no exception, and pangolin poaching and illegal trade has become a major concern in recent years for Namibian conservationists.

While Namibia boasts large areas of excellent pangolin habitat, conserving this species requires more than just meeting its ecological requirements. Pangolin conservation requires the whole of Namibian society to care about this vulnerable and rarely seen animal, such that ordinary people are willing to stand against pangolin poaching and trafficking.

Namibian society is multi-cultural, economically unequal, and demographically young. Pangolin conservation must therefore involve the youth across all cultures to create positive perceptions and national pride to effectively counter poaching and illegal trade for short-term financial gains. The future lies in the hands of today's youth, and their outlook and perceptions are developed through their formal and informal educational experiences.

National efforts to create awareness, prevent or report poaching, and ensure that justice is served to pangolin poachers are led by the Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism (MEFT) and supported by several non-governmental organisations. In 2020 the Namibian Pangolin Working Group (NPWG) was established to formalise this partnership and increase collaboration among state institutions and organisations that are focused on preventing wildlife crime, conserving and studying pangolins.

The NPWG and MEFT have developed several educational resources relating to biodiversity and pangolin conservation, with funding from the Namibian Chamber of Environment (NCE) and GIZ. These include a poster on the natural history of Temminck's pangolin, a poster encouraging citizens to report wildlife crime, a comic-book story about a pangolin and a poaching event, and a career guide describing the many professions needed for successful nature conservation. These resources were combined into a highly informative package and sent to secondary school students as part of an invitation to take part in a creative writing project called Let Every Scale Count – Pangolin and Wildlife Crime.

To show how pangolins and wildlife crime relate to the Namibian curriculum, we placed each of the secondary school subjects into one or more environmental pillars: cultural, social, economic, political and natural. We designed an infographic showing the school subjects categorised according to the environmental pillar, a map of the threats and the routes of the illegal international trade, and some ideas for creative story lines. The infographic and aforementioned educational resources were distributed to all combined and secondary schools with an invitation to participate in the Let Every Scale Count creative writing challenge.

According to the 2019 statistics of the Ministry of Education, Arts and Cultures (MEAC) there are 624 combined and 221 secondary schools across Namibia's 14 regions. With endorsement from the MEAC directors and assistance from their distribution officers, we sent the infographic and other resources for the Let Every Scale Count challenge to all 845 schools on the MEAC database.

Students from 36 schools in 11 of Namibia's 14 regions responded to our invitation and sent in 166 creative stories for our team of judges to read. Selecting the best stories was a difficult process, since there were many excellent and diverse submissions to choose from. Every learner who submitted a story received a certificate of participation as a Biodiversity Ambassador and winners were selected per region and per grade. The range of books awarded as prizes were generously donated by the Rooikat Trust, Namibia Book Market, Wordweaver, The Book Den and Pollination Publishers.

To further encourage the conversation between the arts and the sciences, the NPWG planned and hosted a visual arts exhibition at the Namibia Arts Association's gallery in Windhoek. Independent artists were invited to submit their artworks for the exhibition under the theme of Let Every Scale Count. Over fifty artworks were submitted and judged by a panel of Namibian art experts. Kenneth /Uiseb, Deputy Director of Wildlife, Monitoring and Research at MEFT and chair of the NPWG, addressed the well-attended opening evening of the exhibition and encouraged all Namibians to play their part in pangolin conservation.

To create a safer world for pangolin and other wildlife species, we must acknowledge and strengthen the interdependence between ecology and society. The arts go hand-in-hand with science. The arts can express the findings of a scientific enquiry in elegant and creative ways that speak to the public imagination. Creating stronger links between the arts and the sciences can potentially foster creative reasoning and cross-fertilisation of concepts and stimulate intellectual creativity.

In conservation, the arts can engage the public by creating awareness of the threats that species face and the ways in which everyone can help to reduce those threats. Our experience with linking pangolin conservation to creative school children and adults was highly encouraging, showing that Namibian society is inspired to Let Every Scale Count.