Journal of Threatened Taxa |
www.threatenedtaxa.org | 26 July 2021 | 13(8): 19156–19158
ISSN 0974-7907 (Online) | ISSN 0974-7893
(Print)
https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.7508.13.8.19156-19158
#7508 | Received 09 June 2021 | Finally
accepted 13 July 2021
First camera trap photographs of
Indian Pangolin Manis crassicaudata (Mammalia:
Pholidota: Manidae) from
Pakistan
Misbah Bint Riaz 1, Faraz Akrim 2, Siddiqa Qasim 3, Syed Afaq
Bukhari 4, Asad Aslam 5,
Muhammad Waseem 6, Rizwana Imtiaz 7 & Tariq Mahmood 8
1,3,8 Department of Wildlife
Management, PMAS Arid Agriculture University Rawalpindi 46300 Pakistan.
2,4,5 Zoology Department, University of
Kotli, Azad Jammu & Kashmir, Pakistan.
6 WWF Pakistan, Ground Floor,
Pakistan Academy of Sciences Building, Constitution Avenue, G-5, Islamabad,
Pakistan.
7 Punjab Wildlife and Parks
Department, Loi Bher office
Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
1 misbahriaz750@gmail.com, 2 faraz.akrim@uokajk.edu.pk,
3 sqasim@gmail.com, 4 mafaq@hotmail.com, 5 asada@gmail.com,
6 mwaseem@wwf.org.pk, 7 rizwanazix@gmail.com,
8 tariqjanjua75@uaar.edu.pk (corresponding author)
Editor: Anonymity
requested. Date of publication:
26 July 2021 (online & print)
Citation: Riaz, M.B., F. Akrim, S. Qasim, S.A. Bukhari, A.
Aslam, M. Waseem, R. Imtiaz & T. Mahmood (2021). First camera trap photographs of
Indian Pangolin Manis crassicaudata (Mammalia:
Pholidota: Manidae) from
Pakistan. Journal of Threatened Taxa 13(8): 19156–19158. https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.7508.13.8.19156-19158
Copyright: © Riaz et al. 2021. Creative Commons Attribution
4.0 International License. JoTT allows unrestricted use, reproduction, and
distribution of this article in any medium by providing adequate credit to the
author(s) and the source of publication.
Funding: None.
Competing interests: The authors
declare no competing interests.
Acknowledgements: The authors are grateful to IDEA
WILD for provision of Trail Cameras for this study.
The Indian Pangolin Manis crassicaudata is categorized as ‘Endangered’ by IUCN
and also listed in the Appendix-I of the Convention on International Trade in
Endangered Species of wild fauna and Flora (CITES) (Mahmood et al. 2019). The
species is distributed across five range countries including Pakistan, India,
Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh (although its occurrence in Bangladesh is not
confirmed by field evidence). The species population is declining across its
range due to poaching and illegal killing for its scales which are traded in
the international markets for making traditional medicines.
In Pakistan, the Indian Pangolin
has been focused for ecological studies like its distribution, habitat,
population density, and food habits (Akrim et al.
2017; Irshad et al. 2015; Mahmood et al. 2012, 2014, 2016, 2019; Waseem
et al. 2020a,b) for last one decade, but no previous records exist for camera
trapping of the species.
In the current study, we have
camera trapped Indian Pangolin in the country providing very first camera trap
photographs of the species from Pakistan. The species has been camera trapped
from two sampling sites; one from Pothwar Plateau (Kallar Syedan site 33.465N &
73.409E, Rawalpindi District) and the other from Rolli
Hills (33.486N & 73.902E), surrounding the University of Kotli (Image 1), Azad Jammu & Kashmir. For this
purpose, we installed eight camera trap stations from January 2021 till June
2021. We collected a total of 131 pictures of Indian Pangolin from Kallar Syedan site and 25
pictures of the species from Rolli Hills site
surrounding University of Kotli AJ&K (Image 2). At
Kallar Syedan site we
confirmed two pangolins (Image 3) (one male and one female) while the female
being pregnant and gave birth (direct field observation) to a baby in the month
of April.
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