Toward a National Pangolin Conservation Action Plan: A Workshop to Build Capacity and a Policy Pathway in Tanzania

Introduction

Tanzania is home to three of the eight pangolin species found globally, including Temminck’s pangolin (Smutsia temminckii; Pietersen et al., 2019), the giant pangolin (Smutsia gigantea; Nixon et al., 2019), and the white-bellied pangolin (Phataginus tricuspis; Pietersen et al., 2019; see Figure 1). The white-bellied and giant pangolins co-occur in miombo woodlands and dense forests within a restricted western landscape encompassing the Kagera, Kigoma, and Katavi regions (Foley et al., 2014). In contrast, Temminck’s pangolin exhibits a broader distribution across forests, savannahs, and grasslands (Nixon et al., 2019; Pietersen et al., 2019). All three species depend heavily on ants and termites as their primary food source, and require access to water and refuge habitats such as dens and burrows (Nixon et al., 2019; Pietersen et al., 2019). Alongside habitat change and loss, mainly due to anthropogenic disturbances and land use (Bhandari et al., 2025; Khatiwada et al., 2022; Kicheleri et al., 2025), pangolins in Tanzania face significant threats from illegal trafficking networks that target both local and international markets, for meat, traditional medicines, and cultural ceremonies (Mgeni et al., 2024; Tinsman et al., 2023). Currently, public awareness of pangolin conservation remains low, and there is no nationally endorsed protocol for the care and rehabilitation of pangolins confiscated from illegal trade (Mgeni et al., 2024).

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Figure 1.

Map showing the distribution of the three African pangolin species found in Tanzania. Source: Foley et al. (2014); Nixon et al. (2019); Pietersen et al., 2019

In response to the threats facing pangolins, the Tanzania Research and Conservation Organization (TRCO), a registered non-governmental organization, organized the country’s first-ever knowledge exchange and capacity-building workshop to address pangolin conservation needs. TRCO convened frontline wildlife and habitat management personnel from various government and non-government agencies to share experiences, knowledge, and challenges in fostering proactive conservation efforts for pangolins (Burton & O'Gorman, 2023; Dietsch et al., 2021; Hughes et al., 2022; Marchini et al., 2021).

Methods

Following guidance from the IUCN’s ‘Scaling up Pangolin Conservation’ (Challender et al., 2014), as well as Marchini et al. (2021), we used a qualitative participatory workshop approach, fostering collaborative dialogue to identify baseline knowledge and explore gaps and capacity needs in wildlife personnel, to address pangolin conservation requirements in Tanzania. Indeed, qualitative approaches are increasingly recognized as essential to conservation science given the socio-cultural and political complexity of biodiversity challenges (Rust et al., 2017). Rust et al. (2017) advocate integrating qualitative approaches into conservation science to strengthen credibility and increase the uptake of qualitative findings in the conservation literature.

Additionally, we referred to Challender et al. (2014) and Ferraz et al. (2020) for workshop design and data analysis from facilitated discussions. This included using a workshop process to gather complex information and distill diverse input from various experts into a concise roadmap for pangolins (Challender et al., 2014). Indeed, facilitated workshops bring diverse stakeholders into structured, repeated interactions that can build trust and reciprocity, two core components of social capital that underpin collective conservation governance (Leguia-Cruz et al., 2024). Empirical studies of participatory governance show that co-creation and dialogue in workshop settings can help strengthen relationships across institutional and community boundaries, which in turn, can result in more fluid and timely information sharing (Leguia-Cruz et al., 2024). A workshop process can also promote experiential co-learning, further improving mutual respect among participants and the legitimacy of the conservation outcomes developed (Gonzalez-Urango et al., 2025). Legitimacy is essential for multi-level governance, where decisions must be accepted across sectors; in doing so, there is an increased likelihood of actual on-the-ground implementation at various scales (Gonzalez-Urango et al., 2025). We suggest then, that a facilitated workshop process was not only a practical approach to bridging disciplinary and institutional divides, but also helped foster relationships and build social networks, and translate scientific information and expert input into policy-relevant guidance for pangolins in Tanzania (Ferraz et al., 2020). Key objectives of our workshop included:

• Gathering baseline knowledge of participants, identifying data gaps and needs, and exploring opportunities for effective pangolin conservation;

Workshop Process

The workshop was held in Morogoro, Tanzania, in November 2023. Before the workshop, an agenda (Table 1) was shared with participants to prepare them and to help identify any missed topics or specific information needs that may arise during the engagement. The TRCO’s board chairperson and the PCRF’s director co-facilitated the workshop, ensuring a flexible, neutral, and responsive approach to participants (Hughes et al., 2022; Marchini et al., 2021). The decision to have subject matter experts skilled in facilitation, government policymaking, and pangolin conservation lead the workshop process ensured a robust and transparent design, rigorous data collection, and the ability to synthesize technical evidence with stakeholder input. This was critical for producing actionable recommendations that had practical applicability. Our approach also mirrors the subject matter expert facilitation used in the IUCN SSC Pangolin Specialist Group’s (2024) West African Regional Pangolin Conservation Action Plan (2026–2056) and is supported by peer-reviewed literature (Ferraz et al., 2020; Guerrero et al., 2015; Marchini et al., 2021).

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Table 1.

Agenda for the TRCO Workshop, Hosted at Sokoine University of Agriculture, Morogoro, Tanzania

Workshop Objectives
1. Increase awareness and build knowledge and technical skills.
2. Increase capacity to address conservation challenges.
3. Identify future training needs.
4. Develop SOPs and recommendations for a National Pangolin Conservation Action Plan.
5. Establish an information network of experts, researchers, practitioners, and more.
DAY ONE
08:00 – 08:30	Arrival and registration of participants (USAID form)	All
08:30 – 09:00	Welcome, opening remarks, and workshop objectives presented; expectations of participants	TRCO & TAWIRI
	Introduction to TRCO and TRCO Pangolin Strategic Plan	TRCO
	Introduction to PCRF and PCRF Pangolin Conservation Initiatives	PCRF
09:00 – 09:30	Participant introductions and description of their involvement with pangolin conservation	All
Understanding pangolins, their ecology, and threats
09:30 - 10:15	Pangolin ecology, threats, and conservation actions globally.	PCRF
10:15 - 10:30	Knowledge, perceptions, and uses of Pangolins and their derivatives in Tanzania.	TRCO
10:30 - 11:00	Communication and information channels - survey	TRCO
11:00 – 11:30	Tea break
Setting the basis for Tanzania’s pangolins
11:30 - 13:30	Breakout Groups –needs/issues facing pangolins in Tanzania	All
13:30 – 14:30	Lunch break
Introduction to SOPs
14:30 – 15:00	What we heard – report back	TRCO
15:00 - 15:30	Overview of SOPs and why they are essential.
15:30 – 15:45	Homework: Tanzania’s SOP needs.	All
15:30 – 16:00	Closing remarks
DAY TWO
08:00 – 08:30	Arrival and registration	All
08:30 – 09:00	Review of Day 1 and today’s agenda	TRCO
08:30 – 10:00	Importance of pangolin handling, rehab, and release SOPs – case examples from Namibia.	PCRF
10:00 – 11:30	Tea break
11:30 – 13:30	Breakout groups – SOPs, the role of community engagement and capacity-building, and future needs and opportunities.	All
13:30 – 14:30	Lunch break
14:30 – 16:00	What we heard – report back	TRCO
16:00 – 16:30	Evaluation - survey	All
16:30 – 16:40	Closing remarks	TRCO, PCRF, TAWIRI

During the two-day workshop, principles of participatory engagement and collaborative communications were used, including cooperative group discussions (Young et al., 2013), root cause analysis (Bauer et al., 2022), and consensus building (Pound et al., 2015). Espousing these principles throughout the workshop process helped to ensure inclusivity, build trust amongst participants, and foster honest and respectful dialogue.

Day Two

The second day focused on applying technical expertise to operational planning. Participants were introduced to standard operating procedures (SOPs) from Namibia and Vietnam as reference models. Drawing on their expertise, participants were re-grouped into three disciplinary clusters: wildlife veterinarians, game officers, and ecologists (see Plate 1). Experts in the group then employed a consensus-based approach to review and discuss the gaps and needs for Tanzania’s SOPs in relation to the country’s ecological, cultural, and institutional context. Again, groups presented their summary findings in plenary sessions, followed by a post-workshop evaluative survey designed to assess participants’ perceptions of the workshop process and outcomes.

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Plate 1.

Workshop participants and workshop facilitators (top left) learning about pangolin biology and ecology, followed by interactive group discussions (bottom right)

The day concluded with a summary of key learnings, documented by the co-facilitators, including recommendations for informing the development of a national pangolin conservation action plan.

Results

Communication Networks and Coordination

Communication dynamics emerged as a central theme, highlighting the strengths and gaps in coordination across agencies and with their social networks (i.e., villages). Using simple descriptive statistics, analysis of the data provided by the 20 participants indicated that the most frequent communications were with TANAPA (33%) and TAWA (26.5%), followed by District Officers (18%), village councils (18%), TAWIRI, TFS, NCAA, and local villagers (13%), with TRCO comprising 10%.

Participants identified five critical communication roles they fulfilled, including:

• Informing direct supervisors (29%)

• Acting as first responders (28%)

• General information sharing (26%)

• Consulting pangolin experts (13%)

• Reporting to supervisors indirectly through district personnel (4%)

Information typically flowed from the village level, where village leaders relayed incidents to district offices and then wildlife regulatory authorities were informed based on jurisdiction and proximity. TRCO was frequently referenced as a critical intermediary capable of agile data collection and responsive coordination, particularly given the organization's established relationships with community members and district authorities. Participants recommended that TRCO continue to play a central role in maintaining data exchange and ensuring knowledge dissemination across levels. These networks, illustrated in Figure 2, provide a conceptual overview of pangolin information flow based on workshop participant responses.

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Figure 2.

Current state (red arrows) and future preferred (blue arrows) communication channels for improved reporting on pangolin observations, capture/seizures, and releases in Tanzania. DGO – District Game Officer; DC – District Commissioner; DED – District Executive Director; TANAPA - Tanzania National Parks; TAWA - Tanzania Wildlife Management Authority; TAWIRI -Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute; TRCO - Tanzania Research and Conservation Organization; NCAA - Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority; and TFS - Tanzania Forestry Services

Discussion

We used a structured, participatory workshop as a practical, repeatable model to engage wildlife personnel in Tanzania on the topic of pangolin conservation, notably to develop policy guidelines for the confiscation, vetting procedures, and release of animals confiscated from illegal trafficking, as well as inform the future development of a National Action Plan consistent with the country’s policy requirements. Much like Marchini et al. (2021), our approach centred on facilitating collaboration to engage participants in co-designing solutions and translating multidisciplinary science and expert input into actionable policy and practice (Dietsch et al., 2021). Indeed, the two-day workshop served as both an inclusive data collection platform and a collaborative forum for constructive dialogue, enabling the integration of scientific knowledge with specific local insights from practitioners to help improve the relevance and accuracy of conservation strategies for Tanzania’s pangolins (Hughes et al., 2022; Rose et al., 2020). That said, the workshop process also helped align participants’ expectations with feasible outcomes, including identifying the financial and human capital requirements for future implementation (Marchini et al., 2021).

Our workshop approach showed that engaging local experts and convening diverse stakeholders in facilitated settings stimulates innovation and improves decision-making in complex, resource-constrained situations (Przesdzink et al., 2021). By enabling open, constructive dialogue, workshop participants produced context-specific solutions for pangolin confiscation response and care, reflecting the local contexts in which they worked (Capitani et al., 2024). Participants also developed new relationships that extended beyond the workshop itself (Capitani et al., 2024; Dietsch et al., 2021; Rose et al., 2020). These interactions helped to build trust, shared norms, and reciprocity between participants, which are essential when multiple agencies and personnel must coordinate complex tasks (Saif et al., 2022). Indeed, fostering interpersonal ties and mutual understanding, or the social capital needed to enable coordinated decision-making and adaptive management for pangolin conservation in Tanzania, is a critical role amongst wildlife professionals that may be overlooked (Bodin & Crona, 2009; Challender et al., 2014). We suggest that workshops are also a practical mechanism for bringing people together to help foster ownership of co-produced outcomes and build social capital, and should be used more widely to facilitate effective conservation governance (Gonzalez-Urango et al., 2025). Indeed, when strong relationships and shared norms take root amongst a group people, collective capacity to problem solve and act effectvely is possible, even when facing adversity (Rose et al., 2020).

Our workshop also identified the need to strengthen relationships with village leaders and involve community members in outreach and capacity-building, as practical pathways to nurture local pangolin stewardship. Recommendations were made to develop targeted training programs for interested community members who could be trained and fairly compensated to monitor wild pangolins, report illegal trafficking, and collect basic habitat data to inform the prioritization of conservation actions (Ostermann-Miyashita et al., 2021). This community-based model mirrors successful initiatives elsewhere, such as Namibia’s Pangolin Guardian Program (Prediger, 2023) and community conservancy approaches like Kenya’s, offering benefits from bridging local ecological knowledge and formal data collection with employment opportunities and strengthening long-term stewardship.

Workshop outcomes also pointed to the strategic and practical importance of NGO involvement in pangolin conservation efforts. Specifically, TRCO’s ability to convene stakeholders, leverage non-profit funding, and serve as a neutral party that facilitated technical, multi-sector dialogue helped identify knowledge gaps and needs, bringing people together to improve policy development and coordination across government departments. The workshop also helped highlight the role that TRCO, as an NGO, plays in bridging communication and building relationships among village leaders and members, as well as with wildlife management authorities. As emphasized elsewhere (i.e., Treves et al., 2009; Marchini et al., 2021), functional communication systems and relationships built on trust and respect are foundational for rapid conservation response, enforcement of wildlife protection laws, and fostering local stewardship (Dietsch et al., 2021; Pomeranz et al., 2021). We suggest that there is a clear opportunity for future research to explore and understand the dynamics of stakeholder communications in Tanzania in relation to pangolin conservation. This can include identifying influential actors in communication networks, understanding what information is being shared with whom and why, determining who the peripheral or marginal groups or individuals are, and evaluating institutional resilience (Bodin & Crona, 2009; Prell et al., 2009; Willcox et al., 2019). Taken together, this could reveal essential leverage points to target conservation interventions. For example, understanding how information circulates, identifying bottlenecks, and utilizing data effectively can be integral to successful conservation governance, including facilitating the transfer of knowledge, promoting inclusive decision-making, and taking appropriate actions (Pomeranz et al., 2021).

At an operational level, the workshop outcomes identified core training priorities for wildlife personnel, village monitors, and local veterinarians. Curricula should emphasize rapid species identification and ecology using visual guides to distinguish Temminck’s, giant ground, and white-bellied pangolins; critical habitat identification and threat assessment to guide restoration and land-use advice for farmers; standardized protocols and data-management systems for recording wild observations and trafficking incidents; and safe capture, handling, and basic first-aid for confiscated pangolins where veterinary care is delayed (Mgeni et al., 2024). Training should also be extended to private and community veterinarians to expand nationwide response capacity, covering anesthesia and immobilization, wound assessment and treatment, nutrition, and husbandry. Where feasible and approved by relevant authorities (Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute, 2020), mobile field kits or labs could supplement capacity for basic diagnostics and care. These recommendations align with the provisional SOPs developed in our workshop and should be implemented in coordination with national action planning processes (Challender et al., 2020).

Participants also identified a critical gap: the lack of standardized systems to record, analyze, and share pangolin incident data across agencies and communities. We therefore recommend developing a centralized, digital database—accessible to all wildlife management and regulatory bodies—for real-time logging of captures, confiscations, injuries, rehabilitation and release outcomes, with built-in protocols for regular data audits, inter-agency reporting, and clear data-governance rules. Such a system should be interoperable with existing national platforms, support standardized fields and automated quality checks, and incorporate best practices from citizen/community science to ensure usability and data credibility (Hughes et al., 2022; OstermannMiyashita et al., 2021). TRCO has begun work on a standardized, automated tool along these lines, and recent efforts in the Ruaha landscape demonstrate how structured data collection can strengthen outreach, community engagement, and law enforcement responses to illegal pangolin harvesting and trade (Kicheleri et al., 2025; Mgeni et al., 2024).

Building and sustaining this database requires parallel investment in community capacity and institutional collaboration. Ongoing engagement with village monitors and guardians to collect rigorous field data will help detect persistent harvest and trade hotspots, map critical habitat for protection or restoration, and identify suitable release sites. Embedding local and traditional knowledge into the database will provide valuable baseline information and improve the spatial precision of conservation actions, while routine validation and refinement by experts and researchers will help ensure that data-driven priorities align with species’ ecological needs and local land-use practices (Challender et al., 2014).

Overall, our approach aligns with global best practices in conservation planning (Ali et al., 2017; Margules & Pressey, 2000; Schwartz et al., 2018) and demonstrates how collaborative engagement with people who hold deep contextual knowledge combined with the best available scientific information can strengthen the technical and social foundations of conservation policy. We suggest that the integration of grassroots insights with scientific information, policy foundations, practical tools, and identified human and financial resource needs co-produced through our workshop creates a clear trajectory towards an inclusive and responsive National Pangolin Conservation Action Plan for Tanzania, where interventions can be designed to be locally appropriate and scalable across the country. However, sustaining and scaling these efforts will require continued investment in interpersonal relationships, robust communication channels, sustained funding, and field-based research that feeds directly into adaptive management. Direct collaboration across organizational boundaries will continue to build the trust, respect, and shared norms necessary for coordinated action and long-term stewardship.

Conclusions

Given the cross-sectoral and multi-scale complexity of conservation challenges, facilitated workshops are a practical way to build governance capacity. By bringing together diverse experts, practitioners, and policymakers, workshops create the interpersonal infrastructure—trust, respect, and shared norms—needed for coordinated responses and for co-designing actionable, country-wide policy (Ferraz et al., 2020). Rather than one-off events, workshops should be treated as deliberate, iterative steps in cultivating social capital that supports effective and equitable governance (Nenadovic, 2015). Workshops also function as a mechanism for assembling and strengthening collaborative networks, which is important for large-scale conservation success (Guerrero et al., 2015; Mbanze et al., 2019). Used strategically, workshops identify and engage a diverse group of stakeholders, which in turn can help institutionalize collaboration while preserving the flexibility needed to respond to context-dependent, multi-sectoral challenges (Guerrero et al., 2015).

Since the workshop, TRCO has continued to work with participants, helping to deliver on the outcomes of fostering communication and coordination (i.e., the social network) amongst government and non-government personnel. TRCO has also continued engagement with government agencies, including TAWIRI, on the development of a National Pangolin Conservation Action Plan. This has included formal adoption of the provisional standard operating procedures (SOPs) , and reflecting on the conceptual framework developed in the workshop (see Figure 3) that maps priority actions, institutional roles, and monitoring milestones in order to help sequence necessary activities, clarify responsibilities, and support future implementation of an action plan.

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Figure 3.

Logic framework generated through workshop participants’ input that conceptually outlines future desired outcomes to support pangolin conservation in Tanzania. Actors include: TAWIRI -Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute; TANAPA - Tanzania National Parks; TAWA - Tanzania Wildlife Management Authority; TFS - Tanzania Forestry Services; TRCO - Tanzania Research and Conservation Organization; NCAA - Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority; village leaders, councils and members; and non-government (i.e., conservation) organizations inside and outside of Tanzania

Indeed, sustained engagement and transparent information sharing are essential to cultivate collective ownership and translate conservation commitments into practical, lasting action for pangolins in Tanzania. If these investments are made now, and link scientists, practitioners, policymakers and communities through sustained partnerships and practical capacity building, we can transform fragmented efforts into a durable, country-wide program. We think our workshop has laid this foundation and converted collaboration into measurable actions for pangolin conservation.