This large pangolin was caught on digicam 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 large pangolin (Smutsia gigantea) – the one one in all Africa’s 4 pangolin species regarded as 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 intensive 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 some of the steadily trafficked animals on this planet.
Large pangolins are shy, solitary and nocturnal – so unlikely to be discovered usually exterior 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 large 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 digicam 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 might 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 vital as a result of there are lots of suspected “local extinctions”, or areas the place the species is not lively, 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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