Assessing Africa-wide Pangolin exploitation by scaling local data

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

Documents

  • Daniel J. Ingram
  • Lauren Coad
  • Katharine A. Abernethy
  • Fiona Maisels
  • Emma J. Stokes
  • Kadiri S. Bobo
  • Thomas Breuer
  • Edson Gandiwa
  • Andrea Ghiurghi
  • Elizabeth Greengrass
  • Tomas Holmern
  • Towa O. W. Kamgaing
  • Anne-Marie Ndong Obiang
  • John R. Poulsen
  • Judith Schleicher
  • Hilary Solly
  • Carrie L. Vath
  • Matthias Waltert
  • Charlotte E. L. Whitham
  • David S. Wilkie
  • Jörn P. W. Scharlemann
Overexploitation is one of the main pressures driving wildlife closer to extinction, yet broad-scale data to evaluate species’ declines are limited. Using African pangolins (Family: Pholidota) as a case study, we demonstrate that collating local-scale data can provide crucial information on regional trends in exploitation of threatened species to inform conservation actions and policy. We estimate that 0.4-2.7 million pangolins are hunted annually in Central African forests. The number of pangolins hunted has increased by ∼150% and the proportion of pangolins of all vertebrates hunted increased from 0.04% to 1.83% over the past four decades. However, there were no trends in pangolins observed at markets, suggesting use of alternative supply chains. We found evidence that the price of giant (Smutsia gigantea) and arboreal (Phataginus sp.) pangolins in urban markets has increased, mirroring trends in Asian pangolins. Efforts and resources are needed to increase law enforcement and population monitoring, and investigate linkages between subsistence hunting and illegal wildlife trade.
Original languageEnglish
Article numbere12389
JournalConservation Letters
Volume11
Issue number2
Pages (from-to)1-9
Number of pages9
ISSN1755-263X
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2018

    Research areas

  • Africa, OFFTAKE, hunting, market, pangolins, trade, wild meat

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