Local Ecological Knowledge Insights Into the Distribution and Activity Patterns of Temminck's Pangolin in Ruaha Landscape, Tanzania

Abstract

Tanzania is home to three species of pangolins: Temminck's pangolin (Smutsia temminckii), giant ground pangolin (Smutsia gigantea), and white-bellied pangolin (Phataginus tricuspis). However, distribution and habitat preferences have yet to be well known across the Ruaha landscape, encompassing the core of Ruaha National Park and adjacent protected and unprotected village lands. This area is thought to hold Temminck's pangolin. Drawing upon local knowledge to help inform conservation planning, we used semi-structured interviews among village members to investigate the distribution and activity pattern of Temminck's pangolins in the Ruaha landscape. Our results show that village lands hold potential habitats for pangolins, and unsurprisingly, that human land use by activity type and human behavior itself influences pangolin observations across the landscape, more so than pangolin ecology. We also learned that more than half of our study's participants did not perceive a decreasing population trend in pangolins over 5 years, despite reports from authorities. Our study provides novel and important baseline information about the distribution of pangolins in the Ruaha landscape, which can be used for spatially relevant conservation planning at local and national scales. Given their willingness to share local knowledge about pangolins and participate in pangolin conservation, we suggest that village members be actively engaged in pangolin conservation efforts, including training on monitoring and reporting pangolin population and distribution, and assisting in habitat management.

Keywords: Tanzania; community; conservation; distribution; local knowledge; planning.

FIGURE 1

Map showing study villages adjacent to the Ruaha National Park (Source: Mgeni, Kicheleri et al. 2024).

FIGURE 2

Pangolin sightings in different (a) land use types, (b) human activity categories, (c) habitat types, and (d) proportion of survey respondents reporting pangolin sightings by ethnic group. NP indicates national park, VL indicates village land, and WMA indicates wildlife management areas managed by local communities. Tribe Factor refers to the ethnic group of respondents, where ethnic groups with n > 5 are grouped (Tribe Factor 20). The number above or within the bars is the total number of reports attributed to the given category.

FIGURE 3

Relationships between the probability of encountering pangolins with an annual household income. The currency unit is the United States dollar.

FIGURE 4

Reported trend in the frequency of pangolin encounters according to respondents during the survey conducted in villages found adjacent to Ruaha National Park. The numbers above the bars represent the number of responses for the given category.

FIGURE 5

Daily circular distribution of hours that local people encountered pangolins. Black lines indicate the observed proportion of time (hours) of reported encounters, and the dotted red lines indicate the 95% confidence intervals. Vertical dotted black lines indicate sunrise and sunset times in the Ruaha landscape.