This big pangolin was caught on digital camera in Senegal’s Niokolo-Koba Nationwide Park on 8 March 2023
Panthera/DPN
A large pangolin has been noticed in Senegal’s Niokolo-Koba Nationwide Park for the primary time in 24 years, reviving hope that the endangered animal has survived within the nation.
“Nobody suspected that the pangolin is still alive in [this park],” says Mouhamadou Mody Ndiaye on the wildlife monitoring organisation Panthera.
The enormous pangolin (Smutsia gigantea) – the one one in all Africa’s 4 pangolin species considered current in Senegal – beforehand inhabited a variety of forests and savannahs spanning Senegal to western Kenya. However in latest many years, the scaly mammal’s inhabitants has declined because of in depth deforestation, together with poaching for its meat and scales. Stories counsel greater than 8 million pangolins have been poached in West and Central Africa between 2014 and 2021, making them one of the vital incessantly trafficked animals on this planet.
Big pangolins are shy, solitary and nocturnal – so unlikely to be discovered usually outdoors of their burrows. A large pangolin was final captured and formally recognized in Senegal in April 1967. Three many years later, an ecological survey found two people. Since then, conservationists haven’t noticed a single big pangolin.
That’s, till 8 March 2023, when one was snapped plodding alongside a dry riverbed at 1.37am. The snapshot was captured by one in all 217 survey digital camera traps scattered all through greater than 4000 sq. kilometers of the Niokolo-Koba Nationwide Park.
“When we saw the young pangolin it was very, very exciting,” says Ndiaye.
This sighting suggests Niokolo-Koba Nationwide Park may function the final stronghold for monitoring and conserving the pangolin in Senegal, says Alain D. T. Mouafo on the Worldwide Union for Conservation of Nature’s Pangolin Specialist Group. That is particularly essential as a result of there are a lot of suspected “local extinctions”, or areas the place the species is not energetic, he says.
“This sighting offers a glimmer of hope for their survival in West Africa and can be used to raise public awareness about the plight of pangolins,” says Mouafo, who hopes it may act as “a game changer for renewed conservation efforts”.
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