Drill Mandrillus leucophaeus
Cameroon; Equatorial Guinea (Bioko); Nigeria
Endangered
According to National Geographic, Drills are shy creatures that live in one small and remote area of Africa. Their faces aren’t as colourful as another species in their genus the Mandrill. Yet Drills still possess a dramatic appearance with pitch-black faces surrounded with a white fringe. Males have fatty cheek pads and a splash of red under their lower lips gives them the appearance of having broken into a makeup cabinet.
Drills are colourful and shy primates endangered directly by #palmoil #deforestation in #Cameroon and #Nigeria. Help save them each time you #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife in the supermarket
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Drills live in the coastal lowland forests and semi-montane forests. In the 1930s, Sanderson (1937) collected Drills in mixed grassland-gallery forest of Cameroon’s Bamenda Highlands but these forests are now largely eliminated. Within the core habitat of the Drill, vast tracts of rainforest have been converted to palm oil, rubber, tea and banana plantations in the last 80 years from Mount Cameroon east to Douala.
The species is threatened by habitat loss, fragmentation and hunting. Habitat loss results from forest clearance on a small but extensive scale for farms, particularly in Nigeria, for large-scale plantations, particularly in Cameroon where multiple oil palm plantation projects are underway or proposed (Morgan et al. 2013), and from commercial logging in Cameroon where several important forests peripheral to Korup are now designated as concessions (C. Astaras pers. comm. 2016).
Drills are threatened by deforestation, particularly in Cameroon where multiple oil palm plantation projects are already underway or proposed (Morgan et al. 2013).
IUCN red list
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Further Information
Gadsby, E.L., Cronin, D.T., Astaras, C. & Imong, I. 2020. Mandrillus leucophaeus. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2020: e.T12753A17952490. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2020-2.RLTS.T12753A17952490.en. Downloaded on 12 March 2021.
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