ABSTRACT
Southeast Asia has long been an important trading partner for China, both as a source of forest, marine, and mineral products from within the region, and as a transhipment centre for commodities from the Indian Ocean rim. The profits from the high demand for the animals and animal parts have undermined legal and institutional attempts to limit and ban the trades. For the supply side, research on the hunting, collecting and trading of pangolins and other endangered animals and animal parts has highlighted how they are part of broader economic strategies of livelihood for communities in different parts of Southeast Asia. The people hunting the animals were not only farmers living around plantations, but also people from outside the villages, the latter often hunting pangolins through opportunity, and belonging to the lower social class, obtained loans from collectors to cover their daily living expenses.
