To date, it is commonly believed that vertebrates, rather than invertebrates, are the main hosts of pestiviruses (Smith et al. 2017). Recently, however, a novel pestivirus, named Fairfax Lookout virus, was identified in ticks (Ixodes trichosuri). However, given its phylogenetic position next to mammalian pestiviruses, as well as its the extremely low abundance, it was proposed that the virus was associated with the vertebrate host rather than from the tick itself (Harvey et al. 2018). In this study, DYPV was not only identified in the pangolins, but also in nymph ticks collected from the pangolins. However, DYPV was not found in the adult ticks also sampled from pangolin 1-Dongyang. Interestingly, although DYPV from ticks was closely related to that sampled from pangolins, there were ∼2 per cent nt differences across the viral genome suggesting that they are separated by multiple transmission events. Phylogenetic analysis indicated that Sunda pangolins, including the pangolin 1-Dongyang, were most likely imported into China from Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines (Fig. 6). In addition, A. javanense ticks have not found in Zhejiang province (Chen et al. 2010), DYPV was not identified in locally collected ticks, and we did not observe this virus in previous large scale tick sampling studies (Li et al. 2015; Shi et al. 2016a,b, 2018). Together, these observations suggest that the virus was probably imported from abroad with the illegal trafficked pangolin.