Pygmy hippo caught on camera in Liberia
10th March 2008
Great news from Liberia, where the rare pygmy hippo has been photographed in the wild.
Liberia’s pygmy hippo population was thought to have been pushed close to the brink of extinction by recent logging, poaching and civil wars.
But a team from the Zoological Society of London captured images of them on hidden cameras in Sapo National Park in the east of the country.
It’s estimated that fewer than 3,000 of the secretive animals survive in the wild.
They live in the Upper Guinean forest across Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. Sadly only 10% of the original forest is intact.
Pygmy hippos were heavily hunted when two civil wars ripped Liberia apart and food supplies became scarce.
Now the biggest threat to the hippos are logging and mining operations, which are threatening to clear the remainder of its forest habitat.
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