Identifying Strongholds for Asia’s Critically Endangered Pangolins

The Pangolin Crisis Fund is funding a new project that will enable conservationists to rapidly identify pangolin strongholds (i.e. areas where important populations of pangolins remain) and then assess the type of resources needed to protect these areas. In the past, prioritizing sites for wildlife conservation in Asia has been based mostly on biological and ecological criteria, yet the resources for these species have been spread too thinly and deployed in places where conservation efforts were not likely to succeed. The new project — led by Daniel Wilcox and Robert Timmins — will use lessons learned from these past approaches and incorporate processes that assess species recovery potential and management effectiveness at sites, like the IUCN’s ‘Green List.’ This new project, beginning in Southeast Asia, has the potential to be scaled up and replicated in other regions. It will be made readily available broadly, thus  enabling donors, conservation practitioners, governments, and civil society organizations to work together identify and protect key sites in Asia with the highest potential for pangolin conservation.