The pangolin has gained unwelcome notoriety in recent years as the world's most trafficked mammal, yet pangolins are severely understudied and their ecology mostly remains a mystery. For the few people who have ever seen these elusive animals, they look reptilian or even prehistoric. Pangolins are in fact the only scaly mammal. Eight species are found worldwide, four are in Asia and four in Africa. In Namibia we have the Temminck's ground pangolin, the only species adapted to an arid environment and found in southern Africa. Pangolin trafficking in Africa is on the rise, as their scales and meat are sought after in China and other Far Eastern countries. Namibia has not been spared from the global trafficking scourge. Since 2016 there have been over 496 arrests, and in the past few years more pangolin-related cases have been opened than for rhino and elephant poaching combined. In only four years, Namibian authorities have confiscated 128 live pangolins and 268 skins or carcasses. The live pangolins are rehabilitated and released back into the wild. Given the high numbers of live pangolins confiscated from illegal traffickers, Namibian conservationists realised that we needed to know more about the pangolin's ecological requirements to inform our releases. Research from better-known mammal species like carnivores shows that translocating an animal from one place to another is not always successful. Yet pangolins were being confiscated from traffickers, rehabilitated and released into areas that were probably far from where they were initially caught. The lack of information on what makes an ideal pangolin release site and what happens to them after release was thus a major concern for the Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism (MEFT) and non-governmental partner organisations that jointly established the Namibian Pangolin Working Group (NPWG).