"The villagers told me they have never seen a single pangolin since," Zhou said.
A survey by the provincial forestry department in 2001 confirmed the wild pangolin population in the province was zero.
Pangolin is the most illegally traded mammal worldwide, with about 1 million being sold over the past decade.
In China, the animal's skin is believed to ease swelling and promote lactation. A kilo of the best quality can sell for 8,000 yuan (1,165 U.S. dollars).
"A female pangolin breeds only one cub a year. But its ultimate predators, humans, kill it in order to produce milk for their own babies," said Zhou, a mother of two children.
Professor Wu Shibao, a wildlife conservation specialist with South China Normal University, said that about 300,000 pangolins were consumed in China each year.
"As a result the Chinese pangolin, one of the world's eight major pangolin species, is almost extinct," Wu said.
But environmentalists have not stopped their search and rescue of the endangered species.
Last year, a villager in Pingjiang County reported he had found a new cave in the mountain close to his home, and believed it was a pangolin dwelling.
Zhou Canying and her colleagues visited the site. They found 13 similar caves, but no pangolin.
"Either they had been poached, or they had sensed danger and fled. I prayed desperately it was the latter," Zhou said
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2020-09-15
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