Gorongosa 2024-FULL-FINAL - Flipbook - Page 32
night-time routines, naturalists
have famously been unable to settle on an exact worldwide census for
the animals. But the scant handful of national figures that researchers have managed to assemble suggests that there may be fewer than
150,000 left on the African continent, though the question is still open
to debate and ripe for more study. Similarly, putting exact numbers
to the illegal pangolin trade is challenging, but the most authoritative study, published in 2020 by German biologist Sarah Heinrich and
Oxford zoologist Daniel Challender, among others, documented that at
least 895,000 had been trafficked from African and Asian countries in
the two decades before their study was written, though they conceded
the actual number is likely much higher.
OWING TO PANGOLINS’ RECLUSIVE
30
PAGE S 2 8-30 : PIOTR NA S KREC KI
HITCHIN’ A RIDE Female pangolins can give birth to one baby about
every two years. Here a mother takes
her baby for a drink during the first
rain of the season in Gorongosa.
