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Environment
impacting
50
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South Africa
Pangolins hold the unfortunate title of being the world’s most trafficked wild mammals – they are hunted to supply a rampant illegal trade in their scales, meat, and body parts. Because of demand – mostly in Asia, where pangolin meat is considered a delicacy and their scales are believed to have medicinal properties – all eight pangolin species are threatened with extinction. This includes the Temminck’s Pangolin (Smutsia temminckii), which is the widest-ranging of the four African pangolin species and the focus of this project.
The single biggest threat currently facing pangolins in South Africa is not poaching, as it is in most other places, but accidental electrocution on electrified fences. A previous study has estimated that as many as 1,200 pangolins are killed on electrified fences in southern Africa every year, along with a myriad of other species that suffer the same fate. These accidental electrocutions are placing a species that is already threatened by illegal trafficking and habitat loss under even more threat; and yet of all the threats facing pangolins, modifying the electrified fences is arguably the easiest to achieve.
The generous funding provided by World Nomads enabled the following activities:
The following has been enabled through this generous grant:
This project involves working closely with the farming communities in both the Northern Cape and Limpopo provinces of South Africa. It has helped to create awareness for smaller animals, and particularly pangolins, among these farming communities. In particular, farmers have been concerned about the numbers of small animals killed by electrified fences on their farms and have wanted to find a low-cost solution, and this project has helped to find such a solution. This in turn has achieved buy-in from local farming communities as they can see the potential to protect their livestock while at the same time living in coexistence with small animals such as pangolins.
This project is still ongoing and is in the field-testing phase across seven sites. Dr. Darren Pietersen is visiting the sites on a regular basis to ensure that the energizers are working properly for the length of the fences and the distances being linked. Following design modifications, it is hoped that this project will be rolled out on a national scale in South Africa, and there is potential for it to be adopted in other pangolin range states across Africa.
This is a ground-breaking project that is still ongoing. Unfortunately, it is not possible for travelers to visit the project as it is being run on private properties.
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