Pangolin Conservation in South Sudan: Three Species on the Frontline

South Sudan became the world's newest nation in 2011, inheriting decades of civil conflict, shattered institutions, and one of the least-studied wildlife estates on the African continent. Within its borders, three pangolin species survive in near-total scientific obscurity: Temminck's ground pangolin in the savanna zones, the giant ground pangolin in forest transition habitats near the DRC and Ugandan borders, and the black-bellied pangolin in the riverine forests of the south. None has been surveyed systematically. No conservation programme targets any of them specifically. In a country where formal wildlife management has been repeatedly dismantled by war, pangolins represent an urgent unknown in the calculus of African conservation.

Three Species in an Unstudied Landscape

The distribution of pangolins in South Sudan follows the country's major habitat zones, which shift from the semi-arid savanna of the north to the forest-savanna mosaic of the south and the river-fringing forests along the White Nile tributaries and the Sudd wetland complex. This ecological gradient can theoretically support all three species present in the country, but confirming distribution requires ground survey work that has rarely been feasible under security constraints.

Temminck's ground pangolin (Smutsia temminckii), listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, is the most broadly distributed pangolin in sub-Saharan Africa and is the most likely to be present across southern and eastern South Sudan. It occupies open savanna, thornbush, and miombo-type woodland habitats that characterise large parts of the country. Its dependence on large termitaria as both a food source and a denning substrate means that its distribution follows the distribution of mound-building termite species, which are widespread but patchily abundant.

The giant ground pangolin (Smutsia gigantea), classified as Endangered, is an animal of Congo Basin-adjacent habitats: moist lowland forest floors, gallery forests, and forest-savanna transitions with significant tall-grass components. Its presence in South Sudan is most plausible in the extreme south near the DRC and Ugandan borders, where the vegetation transitions from savanna to forest. This species requires large home ranges and is sensitive to habitat fragmentation, making it particularly vulnerable in landscapes degraded by conflict and agricultural encroachment.

The black-bellied pangolin (Phataginus tetradactyla), also Endangered, is a specialist of riparian and swamp forests. Its association with water-adjacent habitats means its South Sudan distribution is likely concentrated along the tributaries of the White Nile, the Bahr el Ghazal system, and the Sudd margins. This wetland-dependent species has been poorly surveyed even in better-studied DRC and Central African Republic, where it shares range; in South Sudan, essentially nothing is known about its population size or local ecology.

The Shadow of Conflict

To understand wildlife conservation in South Sudan, it is essential to understand the extent to which armed conflict has shaped every aspect of land use, governance, and human livelihood in the country. The first civil war ran from 1955 to 1972. The second from 1983 to 2005. A brief peace preceded independence in 2011, after which a devastating civil war erupted in December 2013 and formally ended with the Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS) in 2018, though violence has continued in several regions since.

Each conflict cycle has had predictable consequences for wildlife. When formal governance collapses, protected area management collapses with it. Rangers are disarmed, evacuated, or killed. The communities that depend on wildlife tourism or formal employment in conservation lose their livelihoods and turn to alternative protein sources, including bushmeat. Armed groups, whether government forces, rebel factions, or militias, have historically used wildlife resources — ivory, bushmeat, and increasingly pangolin scales — to generate income for weapons and supplies.

A 2014 Wildlife Conservation Society aerial survey conducted during the civil war documented catastrophic declines in large mammal populations in South Sudan, with elephant, buffalo, and tiang populations severely reduced from pre-war levels. Pangolins are cryptic, nocturnal, and not detected by aerial survey, so their status during this period is essentially unrecorded. However, the intensification of wire snare hunting, which is documented across conflict zones in Africa, would have affected pangolins as bycatch in traps set for other species. Snares do not discriminate.

Protected Areas: Paper Parks and Real Habitats

South Sudan's protected area network looks impressive on paper. The country has designated several enormous national parks, including Boma (22,800 km²), Southern National Park (22,800 km²), and Bandingilo (16,500 km²), as well as the smaller but more actively managed Nimule National Park (410 km²) on the Ugandan border. Together, these cover millions of hectares of savanna, woodland, floodplain, and transitional forest habitat that could support all three pangolin species.

The reality of management is far more complicated. Most of these parks functioned as empty designations through the worst conflict years. African Parks Network, the South African-based conservation organisation that has taken over management of Boma and Bandingilo, has been working since 2017 to rebuild ranger capacity, restore infrastructure, and conduct the ecological surveys needed to understand the parks' wildlife populations. This work is ongoing, ambitious, and genuinely difficult in a country where supply chains are unreliable and security situations can change within days.

Nimule National Park is in many ways the best-case example for South Sudan: it is small enough to be effectively patrolled, close to the Ugandan border (enabling cross-border cooperation with Uganda's UWEC and the shared Murchison Falls landscape), and has attracted consistent conservation attention. White and black rhino, elephant, and Nile lechwe are present. Whether pangolins persist at Nimule has not been formally investigated, but the park's size and intensive management suggest that even if locally present, populations would be small.

The Sudd: A Conservation Asset

One of South Sudan's most significant conservation assets is the Sudd, one of the largest freshwater wetlands in the world. Covering more than 30,000 km² at high water and expanding considerably during flood season, the Sudd supports extraordinary concentrations of waterbirds, Nile lechwe, and shoebill storks, as well as large mammal populations that migrate through its margins. For the black-bellied pangolin, which occupies riverine forest and swamp edge habitat, the forest-fringing areas of the Sudd represent potentially significant range.

The Sudd is under pressure from the proposed Jonglei Canal, a massive infrastructure project that, if completed, would drain large sections of the wetland for agricultural irrigation. The project has been dormant since the 1980s but has periodically resurfaced in discussions about South Sudan's agricultural development. Any resumption of canal construction would represent a major threat to the Sudd's ecological integrity and the species that depend on it.

Bushmeat and Commercial Trade

Pangolins in South Sudan face two distinct hunting pressures: subsistence bushmeat hunting and commercial scale trafficking. The two are not mutually exclusive, but they operate through different networks and respond differently to conservation interventions.

Subsistence hunting is driven by food insecurity. In a country where more than half the population experienced food insecurity as recently as 2022, and where conflict has repeatedly disrupted agricultural systems, bushmeat from wire snares and basic traps represents a protein source of genuine importance to rural communities. Pangolins caught in this way are typically eaten rather than traded, though scales may be retained for local medicinal use or sold to intermediaries if buyers are available.

Commercial trafficking is driven by South Sudan's position on the trafficking corridor between Central and East Africa and the markets of East Asia, primarily China and Vietnam. The DRC, Uganda, and Sudan all share borders with South Sudan, and all are documented trafficking source or transit countries. The presence of established cross-border trade networks means that pangolin scales from South Sudan can enter the international supply chain relatively easily. The scale of this trade is unknown due to the absence of systematic enforcement data, but the country's porous borders and limited customs capacity make detection difficult.

Conservation Pathways

Conservation in South Sudan requires accepting significant uncertainty and working within it rather than waiting for ideal conditions. Several pathways exist for improving the situation for pangolins specifically, even within the country's constraints.

Survey work remains the most urgent need. Camera trap surveys and interview-based occupancy studies in Boma, Nimule, and the forest-savanna transition zones of the south would provide the first systematic data on pangolin presence, relative abundance, and local hunting pressure. Such surveys have been conducted for other species in the country and could be extended to include pangolins with relatively modest additional investment.

Cross-border coordination with Uganda and the DRC is a practical near-term opportunity. Pangolins do not recognise international boundaries, and the populations straddling the South Sudan-Uganda-DRC tripoint are likely shared. The conservation frameworks already in place in Uganda (strong national wildlife authority, international NGO presence, cross-border Virunga and Murchison Falls landscape programmes) could be extended to include South Sudan border zones more formally.

Community-based conservation, when security conditions permit, has demonstrated effectiveness in similar post-conflict environments elsewhere in Africa. In countries like Rwanda and Angola, communities that experienced conservation infrastructure collapse during conflict have successfully rebuilt local wildlife management when provided with economic incentives and security guarantees. South Sudan's pastoralist and agro-pastoralist communities have traditional relationships with wildlife that, under the right conditions, can serve as the foundation for community-based monitoring and protection.