How Scientists Track Pangolins: GPS Collars, Radio Telemetry, and Field Research Methods

Pangolins are among the most elusive mammals on Earth. Strictly nocturnal, heavily armoured, and prone to retreating into deep burrows or rolling into an impenetrable ball at the slightest disturbance, they routinely frustrate survey methods that work well for other African wildlife. Yet understanding how pangolins move, where they feed, and how large their territories are is essential for protecting a group of animals that faces the highest levels of illegal trade of any wild mammal. Over the past two decades, researchers have refined a toolkit of electronic and field-based techniques to shine a light on the secretive lives of these remarkable animals.

Why Tracking Pangolins Is So Challenging

The ground pangolin (Smutsia temminckii), the species found across southern and eastern Africa, is active primarily between dusk and dawn. During daylight hours it shelters in self-dug burrows, termite mounds, or dense thickets, making visual detection almost impossible without prior knowledge of its location. Population densities across its range are low, and encounter rates during standard transect surveys are correspondingly rare.

The animal's most distinctive feature — its overlapping keratin scales — also creates a direct problem for electronic tracking. Metal and composite collar housings must be positioned carefully because the scales can shift and press against a device, disrupting signal transmission or causing skin lesions. Any attachment system must account for the pangolin's unique cylindrical body shape and its habit of curling tightly, which can damage rigid equipment if it is not designed with sufficient flexibility.

Radio Telemetry: The VHF Approach

Very high frequency (VHF) radio telemetry has been the backbone of pangolin fieldwork since the 1990s. A small transmitter is fitted to the animal, typically via a soft neoprene collar around the neck, or in some designs via a harness that runs across the shoulders and under the chest to distribute pressure away from the neck scales. The transmitter emits a regular pulse — usually once per second — on an assigned frequency in the 148–152 MHz band.

Field teams carry a directional Yagi antenna connected to a handheld receiver. By rotating the antenna and following the direction of strongest signal, researchers can triangulate the pangolin's position to within roughly 50–150 metres in open savanna. In dense mopane scrub or woodland, effective tracking range drops to 100–300 metres. Battery life for VHF transmitters varies from around six months for lightweight units (under 20 g) to eighteen months for larger packs, allowing extended study periods without recapture.

VHF Tracking in Practice

Night tracking sessions typically begin at last light. A researcher on foot follows the signal, taking compass bearings from multiple positions to fix the animal's location before it moves. This method captures accurate data on nightly travel distances, feeding site selection, and burrow preferences. The limitation is the labour requirement: meaningful home range estimates demand dozens of independent location fixes spread across different seasons and conditions, which means weeks of nightly fieldwork per individual.

GPS GSM Collars: High-Resolution Movement Data

The development of lightweight GPS receivers combined with GSM (mobile network) data transmission has transformed pangolin research. Modern GPS collars can record location fixes at intervals as frequent as every 15 minutes and transmit accumulated data to a remote server each morning via a standard cellular network, eliminating the need for a researcher to be physically nearby during every fix.

For pangolins, collar engineers face three interrelated challenges: weight, form factor, and signal integrity. The collar housing must be slim enough to sit flush with the neck without catching on scales, flexible enough to allow the animal to curl fully, and light enough to meet the 3% body weight threshold. Most successful designs use a breakaway section — a weak link that degrades over 12–18 months so the collar drops off without requiring recapture.

Scale interference remains a significant issue for GPS accuracy. When a pangolin curls into a ball, the scales form a near-solid dome around the body, and the GPS antenna is often occluded. Researchers mitigate this by setting fix intervals longer than typical curl periods, or by programming collars to attempt multiple fixes in a short window and accept the first successful lock. Satellite geometry — the relative positions of GPS satellites in the sky — also affects accuracy, particularly during dawn and dusk when pangolins are transitioning between rest and activity.

Field Methods: Camera Traps, Spoor, and Burrow Monitoring

Electronic collaring requires capture and handling, which carries welfare risks and is resource-intensive. Researchers therefore use a range of non-invasive field methods alongside telemetry to build population-level data without requiring every animal to be handled.

Camera Traps

Passive infrared camera traps placed along game trails, at burrow entrances, and near active termite mounds generate photographic records that can confirm presence, estimate activity timing, and — through individual scale pattern recognition — potentially identify specific animals. Camera trap arrays have been used to establish baseline occurrence data in areas where pangolins have not previously been confirmed.

Spoor and Sign Tracking

Ground pangolins leave characteristic five-toed tracks in soft substrate and distinctive conical excavations at termite and ant mounds where they have fed. Experienced field rangers can follow these signs to locate active burrows and assess relative activity levels across a study area. Spoor data is particularly valuable in communal conservancies and wildlife management areas where camera trap infrastructure is limited.

Burrow Monitoring

Pangolins use multiple burrows within their home range, digging new ones frequently and revisiting old ones unpredictably. Researchers monitor known burrow systems with temperature loggers and motion sensors to record occupancy without disturbance. Burrow depth, orientation, and substrate type are recorded to understand thermal regulation behaviour and seasonal preferences.

Community Rangers and Citizen Science

Systematic telemetry studies are expensive and logistically demanding, which limits their geographic coverage. Community-based ranger programmes extend that reach substantially. In South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Botswana, trained community rangers patrol areas where pangolins have been detected, recording spoor, camera trap images, and GPS waypoints for research databases. Organisations such as the Endangered Wildlife Trust and its Pangolin Programme coordinate ranger networks that cover hundreds of square kilometres beyond what institutional researchers alone could monitor.

Citizen science platforms allow landowners, guides, and nature enthusiasts to submit verified sightings, contributing occurrence records that help identify previously unknown populations. The Tikki Hywood Foundation in Zimbabwe has integrated community reporting into its rehabilitation and release monitoring programme, using sighting data from local farmers and rangers to track released animals in areas without cellular coverage. These contributions are documented and submitted to the IUCN Species Survival Commission for inclusion in range assessments.

For more background on how poaching pressure shapes pangolin populations, see our article on the pangolin poaching crisis, and for detail on the legal frameworks protecting these animals, read our overview of CITES protections for pangolins.

What the Data Reveals: Home Range and Movement Patterns

Tracking studies have produced the first reliable estimates of ground pangolin space use. Home range sizes derived from GPS and VHF data typically fall between 3 and 15 square kilometres, with considerable variation driven by sex, season, and habitat quality.

Nightly movement distances range from 2 to 8 kilometres, with males covering greater distances. Animals show fidelity to core areas containing preferred foraging termite species and reliable burrow systems, but the overall home range is large relative to body size — a reflection of the patchy distribution of ant and termite colonies in African savannas.

Research Contributions to Conservation

The data generated by tracking programmes feeds directly into conservation decision-making. Home range estimates are used to set minimum viable reserve sizes and to identify critical movement corridors between protected areas. Seasonal range data informs the timing and placement of anti-poaching patrols, directing effort to areas where pangolins are most active and most vulnerable to snare capture.

Tracking data has also contributed to trade enforcement. When pangolins fitted with GPS collars were illegally captured, the final recorded locations of the devices provided investigators with precise interception points that were mapped against known smuggling routes. This intelligence has supported prosecutions in several southern African cases and has helped analysts at TRAFFIC and related bodies model the movement of animals through trafficking networks.

At the population level, density estimates derived from camera trap and telemetry data form a core input into IUCN Red List assessments. The ground pangolin is currently listed as Vulnerable, and the quantitative data from tracking studies underpins both the current assessment and future reassessment cycles. Without this baseline, conservation status would rely on anecdotal encounter records — a far weaker foundation for policy advocacy and funding allocation.