(Image: Sanjayan Muttulingham, The Nature Conservancy
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 “vulnerable” on the World Conservation Union’s (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…
