What India Loses When the Pangolin Vanishes: Soil Health, Termite Surges, and Biodiversity at Risk

The Indian pangolin (Manis crassicaudata) is a burrowing insectivore that can excavate tunnels up to 3.5 metres deep. Each burrow aerates compacted earth, creates drainage channels, and deposits the animal's nitrogen-rich droppings at depth, a kind of involuntary composting that improves soil fertility without any human intervention. A single pangolin's territory spans roughly 3 to 5 square kilometres, and across that range, its burrowing activity turns over soil in ways that benefit plant root systems, soil microbes, and water retention simultaneously. When ecologists study abandoned pangolin habitats, one of the first measurable changes is a drop in soil porosity, the earth simply becomes harder and less capable of absorbing monsoon rain.

The pangolin's scales, made of keratin, the same protein as human fingernails, have made it the world's most trafficked wild mammal. But the trafficking conversation almost always centres on the animal itself. The soil it leaves behind, and the insects it no longer eats, rarely enter the frame.

The Indian pangolin eats primarily ants and termites, consuming an estimated 70 million insects per year according to wildlife biologists studying Manis crassicaudata in forest habitats across peninsular India. That number is not incidental. Termites are among the most structurally destructive insects in tropical ecosystems, and their populations are kept in check partly by predation from pangolins and other insectivores.

When pangolin populations collapse in a given habitat, termite colonies expand. This has been documented in African studies of closely related pangolin species, and the biological logic applies equally to Indian habitats where Manis crassicaudata is the functional equivalent. Termites, left unchecked, attack living tree roots, wooden agricultural infrastructure, and the organic matter in topsoil that holds soil structure together. A termite surge does not announce itself visibly at first, it works underground, in the same spaces the pangolin once occupied, dismantling the architecture the pangolin helped build.

In India's dry deciduous forests, across Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, and Andhra Pradesh, where pangolin sightings have historically been most common, local farmers have long observed a correlation between forest health and the presence of these animals, even if the mechanism was never formally articulated.

Soil degradation from lost burrowing activity and termite overpopulation does not stay contained to the forest floor. It moves outward.

Soil fungi, particularly mycorrhizal networks that connect plant root systems and allow trees to share nutrients, depend on loose, aerated soil to colonise root zones. When soil compacts, fungal networks thin. When fungal networks thin, tree growth slows. When tree growth slows in forest-edge zones adjacent to agricultural land, the buffer between forest and farm disappears faster. This is a slow cascade, measured in years rather than seasons, but it is directional and it does not reverse easily.

Farmers in central India who cultivate near forest edges are already dealing with soil quality problems linked to deforestation and overuse. The disappearance of a keystone insectivore from the adjacent forest adds a layer of pressure that soil science can measure but agricultural policy rarely accounts for. The pangolin does not appear in any crop insurance framework or soil health card assessment. Its contribution to the land is invisible until it stops.

Biodiversity loss in this context is not simply a matter of one fewer species on a list. The pangolin's absence restructures the physical and biological conditions that other species, birds that eat termites, reptiles that use burrows, plants that depend on aerated soil, have built their survival around.

The Indian pangolin is listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List. It holds Schedule I protection under the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972, placing it in the same legal category as tigers and elephants. Despite this, it remains one of the most seized animals in wildlife trafficking cases across South and Southeast Asia, with its scales destined primarily for traditional medicine markets in China and Vietnam.

Conservation efforts are fragmented. The Wildlife Institute of India has conducted population surveys, but reliable national population estimates are difficult to produce because pangolins are nocturnal, solitary, and extraordinarily shy. Camera traps rarely capture them. Acoustic monitoring does not apply. Researchers often rely on burrow counts and local informant reports, methods that carry significant uncertainty.

Community forest rights frameworks in states like Odisha and Jharkhand have shown some promise in reducing poaching pressure where local communities have a direct stake in forest health. But habitat loss from mining, road expansion, and agricultural encroachment continues to shrink the territory available to the animal regardless of poaching status. A pangolin protected from a poacher but left with a fragmented, degraded habitat is not a conservation success, it is a slower extinction.

The soil record keeps score even when the population surveys cannot. Ecologists studying sites in Maharashtra and Karnataka where pangolins have locally disappeared have found measurable changes in soil invertebrate diversity within five to ten years of local extinction, a timeline short enough to observe within a single research career, long enough that the connection is easy to miss.