Charles Emogor writes:

I saw my first live pangolin after almost two decades of being a pangolin enthusiast. This was a special moment especially as the purpose of the field trip in Nigeria’s Cross River National Park was to find and tag white-bellied pangolins to better understand their ranging behaviour and activity patterns.

This work is part of my PhD on pangolin ecology and conservation at Cambridge’s Department of Zoology and is aimed at gathering badly needed information to inform the conservation of the world’s most trafficked wild mammal.

Other aspects of my work involve collecting offtake information from local hunters to assess how often pangolins are killed and to determine where, within the park, pangolins are most likely to occur. I am thrilled to be working in the same landscape I began my conservation career 4 years ago (with the Wildlife Conservation Society) and consider myself utterly privileged to be living my childhood dream of working with pangolins.

I recently launched Pangolino, an initiative to raise awareness of the conservation status of pangolins through art and science communication and to foster public support to save pangolins. This work involves working with hunters to curb pangolin killing and building an online community of pangolin enthusiasts. Learn more about my public engagement work on Instagram and Twitter: @pangolino_org and on Facebook: @pangolino. You could win a Pangolino decal by helping to spread the word of pangolin conservation.