The African white-bellied pangolin is a tree-climbing pangolin of Central African rainforests. It feeds on ants and termites.
Overlapping scales cover most of its body, while its face and underside have soft hair. Its long tail helps it grip branches.
White-bellied pangolins move both in trees and on the ground, so a camera aimed only at ground level can miss animals passing above it. In two forest parks in Cameroon, researchers compared ground-viewing cameras with cameras aimed at the upper surfaces of fallen logs. The second approach was designed around the animals’ use of logs.
Log-viewing cameras had more than twice the detection probability of ground-viewing cameras and recorded 100 events in fewer than 1,200 camera-days. The comparison shows how survey design changes detection. In protected forests, placing cameras along routes animals actually use can make monitoring time more productive.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
In two protected areas, cameras aimed along fallen logs detected pangolins more effectively than ground-facing cameras. Adding this placement to monitoring plans and maintaining local records can help document where animals use protected forests.