Until the recent camera trap surveys, the Aders’ duiker (pictured) was thought to live only in two shrinking forests—one in Zanzibar and another elsewhere in Kenya. The antelope, classified as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, has declined from 5,000 to about 1,000 animals in the past two decades.
The camera traps, which snapped roughly 3,300 pictures during the recent survey, revealed the new Boni-Dodori duiker population to be the largest known. Details of the discovery were published July 28 in the journal Oryx.
“This population is a lifeline for the critically endangered antelope,” ZSL senior conservation biologist Rajan Amin said in a statement.
“Given time and conservation action, we could unearth even more new species in this isolated forest, but we are running out of time to stop the forest and its hidden secrets from being destroyed by rapid coastal development.”
