Pangolin is presumed to be the world’s most trafficked mammal, with an estimated 100,000 taken from the wild every year in Africa and Asia, that’s one pangolin captured every five minutes.

The figures and are best estimates derived from data gathered by CITES and is based on confiscation rates of live and dead animals (including scales). When scales are seized one can only estimate by weight of scales how many animals would have died to produce these scales. Moreover, due to corruption in many countries there is a tendency for under-reporting. Short answer, the figure is based on data but it is (like most data) incomplete.