She created an internet storm when she was born in a Thai zoo in July thanks to her energetic and chaotic personality. Now Ecosystems Programme researchers, Dr Huanyuan Zhang-Zheng and Sulemana Bawa, are hoping the millions of fans worldwide will want to help save her natural habitat and species.
Moo Deng was one of seven pygmy hippos born to proud parents, Jona and Tony, at Khao Kheow Open Zoo this summer. But Dr Huanyuan Zhang-Zheng, Researcher and Sulemana Bawa, doctoral student, say her wider family is at risk with their West African forest home threatened by extensive deforestation.
"Widespread deforestation and constant disturbance have made it difficult for pygmy hippos to survive, requiring as they do a combination of dense forests and swamps which already restricted them to a small area. West African forests have lost over 80% of their original area, which confines wild pygmy hippos to small spots in Gola National Forest (Sierra Leone) and Sapo National Park (Liberia).” - Dr Huanyuan Zhang-Zheng
The world once had several pygmy hippo species. Only one remains, in West Africa.
With their forests rapidly disappearing, there simply isn’t enough space for pygmy hippos to find food, thrive and reproduce.
West Africa’s forest loss is particularly heartbreaking as research shows that a remaining patch may be the most productive on Earth, surpassing even the Amazon rainforest. Particularly productive forests harness more of the sun’s energy and turn it into lots of palatable herbs and juicy fruits – more food to support animals like pygmy hippos, and so foster rich biodiversity.” - Sulemnana Bawa
Read more about how cocoa production, gold mining and unsustainable logging, among other anthropogenic causes, are reducing the available forest area for Moo Deng's extended family via Oxford's Environmental Change Institute or in The Conversation: Moo Deng: the celebrated hippo’s real home has disappeared – will the world restore it?