Assessing Africa-Wide Pangolin Exploitation by Scaling Local Data
Abstract
Copyright and Photocopying: © 2017 The Authors. Conservation Letters published by
Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 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. The price of giant (Smutsia gigantea) and arboreal (Phataginus sp.)
pangolins in urban markets has increased 5.8 and 2.3 times respectively, 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.
Type
Journal articleSubject
Science & TechnologyLife Sciences & Biomedicine
Biodiversity Conservation
Biodiversity & Conservation
Africa
hunting
market
OFFTAKE
pangolins
trade
wild meat
TRADE
SUSTAINABILITY
ENFORCEMENT
KNOWLEDGE
SYSTEM
AREAS
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/17625Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1111/conl.12389Publication Info
Ingram, DJ; Coad, L; Abernethy, KA; Maisels, F; Stokes, EJ; Bobo, KS; ... Scharlemann,
JPW (2018). Assessing Africa-Wide Pangolin Exploitation by Scaling Local Data. Conservation Letters, 11(2). pp. e12389-e12389. 10.1111/conl.12389. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/17625.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
John Poulsen
Associate Professor of Tropical Ecology
John Poulsen is an ecologist with broad interests in the maintenance and regeneration
of tropical forests and conservation of biodiversity. His research has focused on
the effects of anthropogenic disturbance, such as logging and hunting, on forest structure
and diversity, abundance of tropical animals, and ecological processes. He has conducted
most of his research in Central Africa, where he has also worked as a conservation
manager, directing projects to sustainably manage natural resources i

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