Pangolin scale lawsuit in Indonesia could shake up how wildlife traffickers pay

When customs officials at Jakarta’s Tanjung Priok Port opened a shipping container flagged for inspection in February 2026, they expected to find sea cucumbers and instant noodles as indicated on the consignment paperwork. Instead, they found 3,053 kilograms (6,730 pounds) of dried pangolin scales destined for Cambodia.

It was among Indonesia’s largest seizures of the illegal commodity in recent years, sparking an unusual lawsuit against the alleged offenders that experts say could be an innovative way to hold wildlife traffickers accountable for the damage they inflict upon ecosystems and biodiversity.

As in many other countries, Indonesia primarily uses criminal laws to prosecute wildlife crimes, an approach that has historically resulted in relatively short prison sentences and fines that rarely approach maximum statutory penalties.

However, Indonesian conservation NGO Science for Endangered and Trafficked Species (SCENTS) Foundation is taking a different approach. In parallel to the state-led criminal prosecution, the NGO has raised a civil lawsuit demanding the alleged traffickers pay to repair the ecological harm caused by removing thousands of pangolins from their wild habitats.

“What was lost in this case was not merely three tonnes of scales,” Ma’ruf Erawan, director of SCENTS Foundation, said. “Behind those scales were thousands of pangolins removed from the wild, together with ecological functions and the values we all hold for Indonesian nature. The offenders must be held accountable for all the harm they caused.”

The organization, represented legally by Jakarta-based law firm NET Attorney, filed the civil lawsuit on Sept. 2 at the East Jakarta District Court.

Specifically, SCENTS Foundation is seeking funds from seven defendants: Four individuals who are also facing criminal charges and three companies allegedly involved in shipping and storing the pangolin scales. If the case succeeds, the defendants will be required to pay to restore 15 hectares (37 acres) of forest and monitor pangolins in Gunung Halimun Salak National Park in West Java, and to implement a public education campaign about the harms of wildlife trafficking. In total, these remedies would cost around $136,500, the foundation says on its website.

Civil litigation for restorative justice

Scientific advisors to the lawsuit estimate the illicit haul could represent more than 8,500 individual pangolins, most of them likely Sunda pangolin (Manis javanica), Indonesia’s only species. Sunda pangolins are listed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List and, like all pangolin species, banned from international trade under Appendix 1 of the CITES Convention. They’re also a protected species under Indonesia’s 1990 Conservation Law, which carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison plus a fine of up to 5 billion rupiah ($276,900) for illegal possession, transport or trade.

Yet the demand for pangolin scales used in traditional medicines, primarily in Vietnam and China, continues to push pangolin species across Asia and Africa toward extinction, despite a lack of clinical evidence that their scales have any special medicinal value.

Richard Moore, senior adviser at IAR Indonesia Foundation (YIARI), who is not involved in the case, said criminal penalties are important for holding offenders accountable and deterring future offenses. However, prison sentences and fines do not repair the harm caused to nature, he said.

“The pangolins killed cannot be brought back,” Moore wrote in an email to Mongabay. “Requiring those responsible to support the protection and recovery of remaining populations and ecosystems makes accountability more closely reflect the harm caused.”

SCENTS Foundation’s claim is based on existing civil and environmental liability laws, specifically unlawful act provisions under Article 1365 of the Indonesian Civil Code, and the Environmental Protection and Management (EPM) Law 32 of 2009. Bringing the claim in the civil courts enables SCENTS Foundation to represent the public interest and seek restorative justice, routes beyond the scope of conventional criminal proceedings.

The civil case is also completely distinct from the ongoing criminal cases against the alleged offenders implicated in the seizure, says Jacob Phelps, a senior lecturer at Lancaster University in the U.K. and co-executive director of Conservation Litigation, an environmental NGO supporting SCENTS Foundation and other conservation claimants around the world.

“You can be found not guilty of a criminal offense but still liable for a civil offense, because the burdens of proof are different,” Phelps said. Therefore, the civil case can proceed independently of the criminal cases. Even if the criminal cases drag on for months or years, the civil case doesn’t depend on their verdicts.

According to Phelps, the remedy-based litigation used in this civil case is legally possible in many countries, including Indonesia. However, it’s rarely used in wildlife crime cases. “These provisions exist in so many places, but aren’t being used,” he said. “It’s an implementation gap that is really shockingly systematic.”

Their underuse in wildlife crime contexts is partly due to a lack of awareness about how to use the law in this way, Phelps said, and partly because environmental laws such as Indonesia’s EPM rarely contain specific guidelines on what constitutes environmental harm and what the appropriate remedies should be. While civil laws in many jurisdictions outline how compensation should be calculated for claims concerning injury or property damage, there are rarely set procedures for environmental remedies. This means plaintiffs in environmental cases have to work on a case-by-case basis to define defensible, scientifically robust remedies for wildlife crimes.

Precedent in Indonesia

Phelps said the SCENTS Foundation case is only the second lawsuit he knows of in Indonesia where an NGO has attempted to use environmental liability laws to seek remedies as a result of illegal wildlife trade.

The first case was filed in 2021 by the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) against a zoo in North Sumatra that was illegally keeping protected species, including Sumatran orangutans (Pongo abelii), gibbons and Komodo dragons (Varanus komodoensis). Walhi requested the zoo pay for the long-term rehabilitation of the orangutans, fund primate monitoring and a conservation education program and make a public apology. However, the district court dismissed the case.

Phelps said useful lessons can be learnt from the North Sumatra case, such as the importance of environmental expertise among the judiciary. “In Indonesia, decisions are made by a panel of three judges, and in any environmental case, there must always be at least one judge who has environmental certification given by the Supreme Court,” he said. “In rural areas, there’s often not enough certified judges to have that, but in Jakarta, there will be no excuse. The judges are under greater scrutiny.”

SCENTS Foundation has formally requested a judge with environmental certification sit on the case panel, which has been granted by the court.

“These signs are quite encouraging, although it does not guarantee the outcome [of the case],” Phalita Gatra, a biodiversity law specialist at the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law (ICEL), who is not involved in the case, told Mongabay in an interview. “We hope the court will look carefully at the evidence and take the environmental harm and the proposed restoration measures seriously.”

To date, the East Jakarta District Court has held four hearings to assemble the parties and address administrative matters. All defendants have been successfully summoned, although authorities are still pursuing one individual whose whereabouts remains unknown. A first mediation hearing is set for Nov. 5. The mediation step is a standard procedure in all civil cases, offering the parties an opportunity to settle out of court, Phelps said. If no settlement is reached, the case will proceed to trial.

Causal links and clear plans

Phelps said that while the use of remedy-focused civil litigation is still rare for wildlife crime cases, it’s increasingly used to hold companies to account for environmental harms, such as pollution, deforestation and forest fires. “What that means is that it’s now part of the public and legal imagination,” he said.

Success has been limited, however, with an analysis of more than 320 civil environmental cases in Indonesia finding that one-third of cases filed by individuals and NGOs were dismissed on procedural grounds, and just one in 26 class action suits succeeded between 2010 and 2022.

Phelps said particularly valuable lessons can be drawn from the Ministry of Environment’s 2012 lawsuit against palm oil company PT Kalista Alam, in which the company was ordered to pay $25 million to restore habitats damaged by illegal clearing of peatland forests. However, it took more than a decade for the company to pay its first installment of the fine. “Part of the reason is they didn’t set out a timeline with clear steps,” Phelps said.

By contrast, Phelps said, the SCENTS Foundation claim includes a specific restoration plan for the funds. “If the money’s recovered, we already have a timeline and steps and government authorities who are ready and willing to do stuff on the ground for conservation.”

ICEL specialist Gatra said a major challenge will be legally demonstrating the link between the loss of the pangolins and the extent of harm liable offenders should pay for, noting the SCENTS Foundation case is a welcome opportunity to explore the scope of the law for remedying wildlife crimes. “It could show how civil and criminal cases can work together to hold people responsible accountable and help repair environmental damage,” she said.

SCENTS Foundation Director Erawan said the civil case considers several different dimensions of environmental harm triggered by the loss of so many individuals. The losses threaten the survival of Sunda pangolins as a species, he said, by reducing genetic diversity and reproductive viability. It also diminishes a key cultural resource and removes their vital ecosystem functions as key soil and nutrient cyclers.

Corporate accountability

Another aspect that makes the lawsuit of global importance is its focus on corporate accountability, Phelps said. The case names three companies, whose culpability will need to be proved in court: an import-export company; a customs-clearance service provider; and a warehouse company.

Historically, companies in Indonesia have rarely been charged with wildlife crimes, because before 2024 Indonesia’s conservation law could only be applied to individuals.

Moore from YIARI said the inclusion of companies in the SCENTS Foundation civil lawsuit is significant since it extends accountability beyond those directly handling illicit shipments to the businesses that may have profited from the illegal trade. “Large-scale trafficking depends on storage, transport, export services and financial networks,” he said.

However, a company is not automatically liable because its services were used for an illegal shipment, Moore said. “Evidence must establish its involvement and the legal grounds for responsibility by tracing company decisions, records and financial transactions.”

For Phelps, the case is an opportunity to explore the scope of what the law can achieve. Law is an iterative process, he said, with each new case ultimately helping improve the legal community’s understanding of how to apply existing laws and make the connections between environmental losses, liability and remedies. “One of our greatest barriers is that people don’t do what they don’t know is possible,” he said.

Whether the case is successful or not, Phelps said he hopes it sends a clear message to NGOs and civil society that it’s possible to take legal action in the public interest and achieve meaningful change.

Banner image: Sunda pangolin (Manis javanica). Image by © thepunggolin via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC).

Carolyn Cowan is a staff writer for Mongabay. Her reporting focuses on wildlife, ecology, and communities responding to environmental challenges across Southeast Asia.

Citations:

Jin, X., Chua, H. Z., Wang, K., Li, N., Zheng, W., Pang, W., … Zhang, J. (2021). Evidence for the medicinal value of squama Manitis (pangolin scale): A systematic review. Integrative medicine research, 10(1), 100486. doi:10.1016/j.imr.2020.100486

Fajrini, R. (2025). Lessons from a Decade of Indonesia Environmental Litigation: Accommodating Public Interests in Civil Liability Cases. Law, Environment and Development Journal, 21(1), 130. doi:10.25501/soas.00506562

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Cite this article

Carolyn Cowan (2026). Pangolin scale lawsuit in Indonesia could shake up how wildlife traffickers pay. Mongabay Conservation news. DOI: https://doi.org/10.66709/news-334087