IT IS a picture that will surprise and encourage conservationists in equal measure. The first ever photograph of a wild pygmy hippo has been taken by a camera trap during a ground-breaking wildlife survey of war-torn Sierra Leone.
Hexaprotodon liberiensis is classified as 鈥渧ulnerable鈥� on the World Conservation Union鈥檚 (IUCN) Red List of endangered species. Populations of these elusive hippos have been fragmented and in severe decline for many years, so much so that biologists feared it would soon follow its Madagascan cousin, Hippopotamus madagascariensis, into extinction.
But the new sighting and the results of an extensive 鈥渟earch for survivors鈥� suggest that the hippos have managed to endure the severe pressures of loss of habitat and subsistence hunting by rebel soldiers during 12 years of brutal civil war, says Sanjayan Muttulingam, lead scientist at The Nature Conservancy in Washington DC, which carried out the study. 鈥淭he pygmy hippo is probably the rarest large mammal you could find in Africa.鈥� It most likely owes its survival to the fact that it lives in very inhospitable marshes and forests.
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Meanwhile many other endangered or threatened species in the region appear to be bouncing back. The trigger for this change, it seems, is the ban on firearms introduced in 2001 and a mass migration of people to the cities, Muttulingam says. A documentary following the survey entitled 鈥淲ildlife in a Warzone鈥� will be broadcast at 9 pm on Sunday 16 April on the UK-based digital TV channel BBC4.
