The jailing of two Vietnamese men who brokered a sale of 900kg (2,000lbs) of pangolin scales from Africa destined for the Chinese market has returned the spotlight to the illicit trade in an animal that has been poached to the edge of extinction.

Prized for its meat and scales, the pangolin has almost disappeared from forests and their hilly habitats of Africa and Asia.

Conservationists estimate around 1 million have been trafficked over the last decade, triggered by demand for traditional remedies in China.

On Wednesday, a court in Bac Ninh, a province outside Hanoi, sentenced Nguyen The Du and Nguyen Anh Ngoc to eight years’ jail each for supplying and brokering the sale of the large haul to police officers posing as buyers in a sting operation last June.

The scales, packed into 46 bags, came from three African species – the giant, white-bellied and black-bellied pangolin – according to anti-wildlife trafficking NGO Education for Nature Vietnam (ENV), revealing the global reach of the trade.