The Pangolin Warrior

In Zimbabwe, GEORGE ROBEY meets a petite conservationist intent on saving the most trafficked creature on Earth

Lisa Hywood wastes no time with small talk. She’s on a mission. The conservationist and director of the Tikki Hywood Foundation based in Harare, Zimbabwe shoulders worriment for Africa’s endangered wildlife, but carries in her heart the plight of the pangolin.

I meet Lisa at her Harare office on a sunny, late-summer day to discuss the obscure, endangered animal that has become the most trafficked creature on Earth. We sit at a long table of polished ornate wood surrounded by beautiful, poster-sized photographs of her beloved pangolins.

“What do you want to know?” Lisa asks abruptly. An enigmatic figure, she’s fierce and openly passionate about underdog wildlife species, but is personally guarded. She shuns questions about herself but effuses when asked about the foundation and the efforts to save pangolins.

Lisa established the foundation in 1994 in memory of her father, the late Tikki Hywood, to create awareness of lesser-known and endangered species, and to champion sound conservation practices. At ground level, the foundation engages in the rescue, rehabilitation and release of needy animals, and the pangolin serves as an institutional symbol.

“In Zimbabwe culture, the pangolin is revered and placed above all other totems,” Lisa tells me. “Only a chief can accept a pangolin.” Its esteemed status, the declarative reason a pangolin is incorporated into the foundation logo, is to honour the leadership passed down from her father.

One of the first animals accepted by the Tikki Hywood Foundation (THF) in 1994 was a female ground pangolin named Negomo. Lisa collected the animal along a dusty African roadside, handed to her in a sack. “It was obviously abused, and I could only imagine the stress of that animal,” Lisa says. “I knew nothing about how to help. It was terrifying.”