Attitudes to pangolins and factors affecting their conservation in a human dominated landscape in Nepal

Pangolins in Nepal are found mostly in human‐dominated landscapes where their numbers are declining due to illegal hunting and trade. Positive attitudes of local people are believed to be powerful drivers for the conservation of threatened species. We explored local attitudes using a semi‐structured questionnaire survey of 1017 people from 105 villages in rural areas across Nepal to investigate the key factors influencing local attitudes towards pangolins and their conservation. Topography and education level were identified as strong predictors of attitude scores as was geographic variation associated with differences between provinces. Positive attitudes were observed in the majority of respondents from Madhesh Province and Koshi Province in eastern Nepal, in those with higher levels of education and those from the lowland Terai region. Respondents from Karnali Province, western Nepal and those living in the Mid‐hill region, had significantly lower attitude scores. However, a significant number of respondents with negative attitudes towards pangolins in Karnali Province also reported higher levels of illegal hunting. Local stewardship can be promoted through awareness campaigns and alternative livelihood initiatives. Collaboration with local communities and stakeholders as well as their capacity enhancement should be a priority for the sustainable conservation of the species.


| INTRODUCTION
The relationship between humans and wildlife may be strongly affected by attitudes (Liu et al., 2011).Attitude is the degree to which a person has a favorable or unfavorable evaluation or appraisal of the behavior in question (Ajzen, 1991).Similarly, it consists of attribute dimensions such as likable/dislikable, harmful/beneficial, good/bad, and pleasant/unpleasant (Ajzen, 2001).Attitude is the tendency to think, feel, value, or act positively or negatively towards objectives in our environment (Voigt & Kingston, 2016).This term is also understood as a multi-component concept involving beliefs, emotional states, and behavior (Vaske et al., 2021).Attitudes have also been understood as a disposition or tendency to respond with some degree of favorableness, or not, to a psychological object, the psychological object being any discernible aspect of an individual's world including an object, a person, an issue, or a behavior (Kansky et al., 2014).Han and Kim (2010) explain attitude as a silent behavioral belief and outcome evaluation.Behavioral beliefs refer to one perceived probability of an expected outcomes by a particular behavior whereas outcomes evaluations are the possible consequences of a specific behavior (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980).Attitudes towards wildlife are often shaped by people's previous experience with the animals as well as their belief systems (Best & Pei, 2020;Spash, 1997;Zimmermann et al., 2005).People with negative attitudes may be more prone to respond to damage caused by wildlife by killing the animal(s) or supporting similar retaliation by others (Don Carlos et al., 2009;St. John et al., 2014).Such retaliatory killing can lead to population declines (Ogada et al., 2003).People with positive attitudes towards wildlife tend to be more accepting of conservation actions that enable the population to grow (Greenspan et al., 2020;Gusset et al., 2009;Kaczensky et al., 2004).Attitudes can provide insight into behavior towards wildlife even when the attitude and behavior are not consistent across different groups of people in different geographical areas (Mir et al., 2015).Conservation attitude surveys may help to predict how people's attitudes influence conservation policies, allowing for more effective wildlife management and conservation planning (Fiallo & Jacobson, 1995).For example, proconservation values can be promoted by maintaining the sustainable hunting of wildlife (Davis, 2020).
Two species of pangolin, the Chinese pangolin (Manis pentadactyla) and the Indian pangolin (Manis crassicaudata) are found in Nepal.The Chinese pangolin has been recorded in different parts of Nepal's ecological and topographic regions, but mostly in the Mid-hill topographical region.The Indian pangolin is mostly distributed in the southern and western areas of the lowland Terai topographical region (Suwal et al., 2020).Both species of pangolins occur mainly in Nepal's human-dominated landscapes, outside of protected areas, and where their populations are thought to be in steep decline due to illegal hunting (Suwal et al., 2020).Pangolins are estimated to be the most heavily trafficked wild mammals in the world, and are globally threatened due to poaching and trade for their meat, scales, and skin (Challender et al., 2020).The Chinese pangolin is classified as critically endangered and the Indian pangolin is classified as endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™ (IUCN, 2021).Both species are listed on Appendix I of the Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES).They are also protected under Nepal's National Parks and Wildlife Conservation (NPWC) Act of 1973, however suffered substantial population declines in recent decades (DNPWC & DoF, 2018).Studying these highly threatened species in the field is challenging due to both low population density and detectability (Nash et al., 2016).Community perception is an important alternative source of information about key factors in species conservation, such as threats and population trends (Willcox et al., 2019).Over three dozen research on pangolin have been conducted in Nepal but most of them were focused on status, distribution, habitat preferences and illegal trade (Suwal et al., 2020).Few social sciencebased studies have been conducted in Nepal that focus on the knowledge (Sharma, Sharma, Katuwal, & Belant, 2020) and cultural uses of pangolins (Katuwal et al., 2015) in some parts of country.
The current human population of Nepal is 30.03 million, 78.99% of whom live in rural areas (CBS, 2021).The country is comprised of 25.4% forest cover and approximately 28.8% agricultural land, which consists of arable land, permanent pasture, and permanent crops, located mainly in the Mid-hill area and in the southern lowland Terai topographical region (Gangga, 2019).More than 80% of Nepali people depend on agriculture and natural resources for their livelihoods (Avis, 2018).Demographic characteristics including gender, age, education, occupation, and ethnicity are all potential factors influencing the attitudes of local communities towards pangolin conservation (Swiack a et al., 2022).People are likely to have a higher tolerance for species that contribute significant benefits and that pose a low level of risk.In addition, acceptance of wildlife conservation can result when individuals hold positive feelings towards a species, exert control over it, and trust those in charge of managing the species (Glikman et al., 2019).The present study aimed to understand unexplored issues by surveying a wide range of communities throughout Nepal which will also support the pangolin strategy plan set by Nepal's Government (DNPWC & DoF, 2018) to develop local stewardship for long-term pangolin conservation.This study also aspired to provide insights that could help local government bodies and conservation stakeholders to develop more effective pangolin conservation initiatives by taking into account factors influencing local attitudes towards wildlife, in accordance with the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 2010).Our specific goals were to understand (a) the attitudes of local communities towards pangolins and their conservation, and (b) local communities' opinions on pangolin population trends and threats to pangolins, and (c) the likely drivers of pangolin poaching in Nepal for future conservation interventions aimed at mitigating the threats.

| Study area
The survey was conducted in the rural areas of 21 districts: three districts in each province across Nepal (Figure 1).Nepal is a landlocked country that lies between two large neighboring countries, China in the north and India in the east, south, and west.The country is divided into seven provinces with 77 districts.Koshi Province is situated in the easternmost of the seven provinces with altitudes ranging from 70 to 8848 m above sea level (asl), and is just above Madhesh Province which is located on the flat plains of the southern lowland Terai region.Bagmati Province is situated in the east-central part of Nepal and includes the nation's capital, Kathmandu.The geographical location, area, population size, household number, as well as ethnic and linguistic features in each province are diverse (CBS, 2021).Madhesh Province has the highest human population density (636/km 2 ), followed by Bagmati Province (300/km 2 ).The western half of the country including Gandaki Province, Lumbini Province, Karnali Province and Sudurpashchim Province have lower human population densities with the lowest in Karnali Province (61/km 2 ) (Table S1).
The study area included the southern lowland Terai and Mid-hill (between the Himalayas and the Terai Mountain Range) topographical regions (Figure 1), which stretch across the length of Nepal from east to west.The Terai is adjacent to the southern border of Nepal and covers 17% of the country's land area along an altitudinal belt ranging between 60 and 305 m asl.This landform supports tropical forests with broadleaf and coniferous trees and has Nepal's highest species richness, providing critical habitat for endangered and charismatic species such as the Bengal tiger, greater one-horned rhinoceros, Asian elephant, and Indian and Chinese pangolins.The Terai is also Nepal's most populated region with 53.7% of the total human population of the country (population density: 461/km 2 ).The Terai straddles the open Nepal-India border and the effect of this can be seen in its diversity of ethnicities, languages, cultures and traditions.The mountainous Mid-hill cover 68% of Nepal's total land total area, beginning with the eastwest Mahabharata Mountain range, with altitudes spanning from 1000 to 2700 m asl.This landform has a subtropical climate at low altitudes and a temperate climate at high altitudes.About 40.2% of the total country's population (population density: 192/km 2 ) lives in the Midhill.The remaining 6.1% of Nepal's population lives in the high Himalayan mountains (population density: 34/km 2 ) (CBS, 2021).

| Data collection
A set of semi-structured questionnaires was prepared in Nepali and English (Appendix-SI).Interviewees were selected from 21 districts, which are the second level of administrative divisions after provinces in Nepal.Three districts from each province were selected randomly, excluding districts with no prior records of pangolin occurrence (Suwal et al., 2020).Similarly, five villages per district were randomly selected in order to provide a wider representative sample of interviewees, for a total of 105 villages.Surveys were administered by researchers in 3 months from January to March 2020 before COVID lockdown and performed by walking through the villages and interviewing one respondent per household (with age ≥ 18 years) without the bias of gender and rank of family (head/nonhead).At least 10 households were selected randomly per village to ensure sufficient data was collected to capture potential variation in responses for each question.Respondents were informed of the objectives of the study and asked to provide verbal consent before each interview.Each interview lasted about 30-40 min.Respondents were shown color-printed photographs of the two-pangolin species (Chinese pangolin and Indian pangolin) in order to confirm their recognition of the species.Excluding 33 unclear and surveyors incomplete answer sheets, 1017 interviews were included for data analysis.
A standardized questionnaire survey with both openended and closed questions was developed (Newing, 2021) to gather qualitative and quantitative information regarding: (a) the respondent's demographic background, such as gender, age, education, occupation, family size and ethnicity; (b) their attitudes towards pangolin conservation; and (c) their perceptions of local pangolin population trends and the severity of threats including illegal hunting and trade.Participants were classified according to whether they were Indigenous or non-Indigenous, where the classifications were based on their caste and mother tongue (Table S2).An index of positivity towards pangolins was derived for use as a response in statistical models capturing some aspects of respondents' attitudes.A threelevel ordinal score was created based on their responses to the questions: Positive (score + 1) for ≥4 "Yes" responses, Neutral (score 0) for 2-3 responses received as "Yes", and Negative (score À 1) for at least single response received as "Yes" (Table S3).

| Data analysis
R version 3.4.(R language, 2021) was used for statistical analysis of the questionnaire responses.We substituted numerical codes for answers where possible or used the narrative responses as qualitative data (Kusi et al., 2020).Province, topography, gender, age group, family size, ethnic group, education level, and occupation were used as predictor variables, similar to Suwal et al. (2022).We treated "village" identity as a random factor to account for spatial clustering of respondents.We explored patterns of collinearity between predictor variables.Associations between numeric, ordinal, and nominal variables were assessed using different tests.We ran Kruskal-Wallis tests on combinations of numeric to nominal and ordinal to nominal predictor variables.Combinations of nominal variables were examined using Cramer's V, with a cut-off criterion of 0.5 (Ellis et al., 2010).These tests were used in combination with variance inflation factors (VIFs) to explore collinearity among predictors using the rms package of R (Walker, 2003).We excluded variables when there was evidence of substantial collinearity (Miles, 2014).All VIF's for models presented here were below 5, showing that there were no problematic levels of collinearity between variables included within the same model (Lin, 2008).
Associations between categoric variables of interest were explored using cross-tabulation, and contingency table, χ 2 tests were used to test associations between variables.Using the clmm function in the "ordinal" package of R (Christensen, 2011), a cumulative link mixed random model was fitted to construct models predicting Likert scale ordinal responses from a series of generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs).The R package "effects" (Fox et al., 2020) was used to visualize effect sizes for predictors of attitude scores fitted with the global model.We used an Information theoretic approach for model selection (Grueber et al., 2011) and used the Akaike's Information Criterion (AICc) for ranking the models (Beier et al., 2001).The model weights were calculated using R package MuMIn (Barton & Barton, 2020) to evaluate relative model weights in the set of candidate models (Bolker et al., 2009).We examined parameter estimates of variables in the global model and in top ranked models in order to assess the marginal significance of their effect on overall attitude scores.Finally, we accounted for model uncertainty by using model averaging based on model weights (Beier et al., 2001) and averaged the parameter estimates in all the models to a cumulative weight of 0.95.

| Demographic background
Of the 1017 valid interviews, a slightly higher percentage of respondents were male (55.3%).Many respondents (33.0%) were of the age group 31-45 years of age and a nearly equal percentage of respondents had primary (29.5%) and secondary education levels (29.0%).Most of the respondents were farmers who were completely dependent on local agriculture (51.9%) in addition to living in a joint family of five to eight members (58.0%).There were slightly more respondents belonging to the Indigenous community than the non-Indigenous community (53.2%).The percentages of respondents from the seven different provinces were nearly equal, with the highest percentage from Lumbini Province (P5) (n = 180, 17.7%), and a slightly lower percentage from Karnali Province (P6) (n = 129, 12.7%).There were nearly equal percentages of respondents from the Mid-hill and Terai topographical regions, 51.0% and 49.0% respectively (Table 1).

| Pangolin conservation attitudes
More than half of the respondents (51.8%) indicated that they 'liked' pangolins.A similar majority said that  this species is 'important' for the ecosystem (54.6%) so that they need to be 'protected' like other flagship mammals such as tiger, rhino, elephant, and snow leopard (67.4%).A large majority (71.2%) of respondents expressed they were 'willing' and agreed to conserve the species in their areas.However, fewer respondents were in support of giving punishment to those people who killed pangolins for consumption and trade according to Nepalese law (42.2%).A total of 43.8% respondents had 'positive' attitudes towards pangolins and their conservation while 24.2% of respondents held 'negative' attitudes, and 32.0% responded were 'neutral.'Majority of respondents' attitudes from Koshi Province (60.7%),Madhesh Province (60.8%) and Lumbini Province (55.0%) were positive whereas a majority of respondents from Karnali Province had negative attitudes (57.4%) towards pangolins.Similarly, more respondents residing in the Terai region (57.3%)expressed positive attitudes compared to respondents from the Mid-hill (30.7%).Respondents from the age group of 18 to 30 years (48.0%),those with a tertiary level of education (48.0%), government employees (55.0%), and those with a family size greater than 12 members (59%) showed positive attitudes towards the species (Figure S1).
The top model for predicting attitudes towards pangolins included topography, province, education level and family size as the predictors (Table S4).Topography, province, and education level were consistently included in the higher-ranked models predicting attitude scores (Table S4; Figure S2).Model-averaged parameter estimates provided evidence that provinces, topographical regions, and education levels were statistically significant predictors with respondents from Karnali Province having lowest attitude scores (estimate = À2.25,p < .001)(Table 2, Figure S1a).Similarly, the model-averaged parameter estimates predicted that the respondents living within the Terai region had the highest scores (estimate = 1.50, p < .001)(Figure S1b).A tertiary level of education was also associated with high scores (estimate = 1.38, p = .008)(Figure S1f).

| Population trends and threats
Respondents who claimed to have seen a wild pangolin in their locality were also asked to provide the sighting location along with the month of the most recent sighting and their perception of the status (trends) of local pangolins.Just over half of the respondents (51.1%) reported seeing a wild pangolin, while 49.9% had never seen the species.
Among the respondents who had seen the species, approximately half of them (26.1% of the total) had sighted a pangolin within a 5-year period while only a few (5.2% of the total) had sighted pangolins within 1-year of the survey.Pangolins were sighted in all surveyed provinces except Lumbini Province in western Nepal.There was strong evidence that respondents from different provinces perceived pangolin population trends differently (χ 2 = 387.58,df = 24, p < 2.2eÀ16).Overall, 47.7% respondents reported no familiarity with the status of pangolins in their area.The majority of people from Koshi Province (81%) responded that they perceived a decline in pangolin populations followed by Lumbini Province (57%) and Madhesh Province (49%) (Figure 2a).Similarly, many respondents from the Terai region (58%) reported that they perceived declining trends in the pangolin population (χ 2 = 139.21,df = 4, p < 2.2eÀ16) (Figure 2b).Among three survey districts of Koshi Province, a majority of respondents from Khotang (89%) and Morang (87%) districts perceived there to be a decline in the pangolin population trend followed by those from the Banke district (88%) in Lumbini Province (χ 2 = 907.44,df = 80, p < 2.2eÀ16) (Figure S3).
Overall, more than half respondents (51.8%) identified illegal hunting as a major threat to pangolins.Besides illegal hunting and trade, many respondents said that habitat degradation (40.0%) and forest fires (35.1%) were also majors threat to the pangolins.Similarly, infrastructural development such as road construction (19.9%) and livestock grazing (14.6%) were also considered causes of pangolin population declines.Natural calamities like landslides, soil erosion, earthquakes, and floods as well as the use of pesticides and insecticides were rarely reported to be a threat to the species.The highest numbers of responses specifying these threats were from Banke and Bardia districts in the lowland Terai region of Lumbini Province (Figure 3a,b), and Khotang district in Koshi Province (Figure S4).
The majority of respondents from Koshi Province (75%), Madhesh Province (63%) and Lumbini Province (74%) were aware that the hunting of pangolins is prohibited.However, illegal hunting by local people was also reported to be higher in Koshi Province in eastern Nepal, followed by Madhesh Province, and Bagmati Province in central Nepal.Similarly, 16.2% of respondents said that outsiders were involved in illegal hunting in Lumbini Province, the western Terai region near the Indian border.
Many respondents (43.0%) said that they did not know why the pangolins were killed.Only 31.2% of respondents reported that pangolins were killed for local use while 25.2% of respondents said that the pangolins were killed for trade motivated by financial opportunity.This was particularly conspicuous for respondents from the Koshi Province (67%), which is adjacent to the Nepal-China border.In addition, 10.1% of respondents stated that pangolin meat was consumed by local hunting as a culinary delicacy as well as for medicinal use.
The association between the responses of people who knew about the legal prohibitions against killing pangolins and those who knew someone that engaged in unlawful pangolin buying and selling was highly significant (χ 2 = 17.6, df = 1, p = 2.726eÀ5).Most people (81%) who responded that they knew the legal status of pangolins had information about people who were involved in the illegal buying or selling of pangolins.Financial benefit was considered the main driver behind all of the illegal trade activities.

| DISCUSSION
This study represents the first large-scale social sciencebased survey in Nepal to be conducted, following the first nation-wide study estimating the potential distribution of pangolins (Suwal et al., 2020).Our findings provide insights into whether the attitudes of local people towards pangolins and their conservation are influenced by geographical, topographical, demographic, and socioeconomic factors, which could inform the formulation of conservation programs in priority areas and communities as well as develop the community-led conservation for sustainable conservation of pangolins in Nepal.
Attitude scores differed across topographical regions, provinces, levels of education and family size.Most previous studies on pangolins and conservation awareness initiatives were conducted by government and nongovernment conservation agencies and were focused in Koshi Province and Bagmati Province in eastern and central Nepal along the Terai belt where attitudes towards pangolins tended to be positive (Suwal et al., 2020;Suwal et al., 2022).The negative attitudes towards pangolins among the respondents from Karnali Province in western Nepal were associated with lack of knowledge and the absence of conservation activities.Similarly, negative attitudes from the Mid-hill region were associated with limited community-based wildlife initiatives in that region.Most of the protected areas are located in the lowlands Terai and Himalayas range, which is why such conservation initiatives have been focused in these areas (Khatiwada et al., 2020).
Lower levels of knowledge about the species may be due to the lack of involvement of locals in research and conservation programs (Best & Pei, 2020).Future research and conservation campaigns should focus on those areas with negative attitudes to fill the information gaps and raise awareness among local communities.The diverse landscapes and heterogeneous topography extending from east to west throughout the seven provinces result in varied socio-ecological and socio-economic factors and diverse lifestyles, which in turn could influence attitudes (Arjunan et al., 2006).Respondents with positive attitudes towards pangolins could be recruited to help with pangolin conservation efforts by sharing their experiences and encouraging others to conserve them (Hosaka et al., 2017).Including local people in decisionmaking about the management of their natural resources and providing them with access to the conservationrelated benefits could positively influence their attitudes towards wildlife conservation (Gandiwa, 2012).
People with higher levels of education are expected to be relatively more conversant with wildlife protection laws and have a greater awareness of the importance of wildlife conservation similar to local attitudes towards mountain lions in Arizona (Casey et al., 2006).Conversely, lower levels of knowledge about wildlife could contribute to negative attitudes towards wildlife (Mkonyi et al., 2017).Family structure is a bridge to education and more interaction takes place among family members in a larger family (Maliki, 2017).This could promote sharing of positive values and attitudes by knowledge transfer across generations.This is likely to happen, naturally in Nepal where there is a culture of three to four generation families.
Training opportunities and awareness-raising programs targeting government employees could have contributed to their positive attitudes (Weladji et al., 2003).Other occupations tended to have neutral and negative attitudes, which could be attributed to a lack of conservation awareness programs targeting these people.Limited experience with wildlife-related conservation activities can contribute to emotional prejudice and subjectivity (Inskip & Zimmermann, 2009;Slagle et al., 2012).Similarly, low levels of awareness could negatively affect people's appreciation and support for wildlife and conservation policies (Kaimo et al., 2019).Future conservation activities should be designed to include people across a range of occupations.All levels of academic curricula could positively influence attitudes of students and teachers towards pangolins.The results of this study can support the development of more effective pangolin conservation initiatives including local community engagement.
At present, pangolins are recorded from 61 out of 77 districts across all provinces in Nepal, with most records originating from human-dominated landscapes (Suwal et al., 2020).However, participants reported that there are no recent observations or records of pangolins in certain places where pangolins were sighted frequently 15 years ago.This is clearly linked to population declines resulting from overexploitation of habitat, extensive poaching and illegal trade (Nash et al., 2016;Trageser et al., 2017;Zhang et al., 2020).Illegal hunting (D'Cruze et al., 2018), habitat degradation (Gurung, 1996) and forest fires (Suwal et al., 2020) in these areas are considered to be the causes of declines in pangolin population and densities, which may have reduced the likelihood of pangolin sightings (Nash et al., 2016).A majority of respondents from Koshi Province and Karnali Province believed that pangolin population seriously decreased and the species to be locally extinct respectively.Respondents in some parts of Bagmati Province, which includes the national capital city Kathmandu, described an increase in pangolin populations.This could be attributed to the recent increase in the rescue of live pangolins from the illegal trade as well as effective release protocols, the maintenance of high quality natural habitat, and the increased involvement of local communities in pangolin conservation activities (Suwal & Pei, 2020).Thus, along with awareness-raising campaigns, research on the ecological, socio-economic, and interdisciplinary factors that may be contributing to the decline in pangolin populations is needed.Accurate pangolin population estimation and habitat restoration are essential for the long-term conservation of the species, along with multi-sector collaborative interventions.
Over half of interviewees were aware of legislation that strictly bans the hunting and trade of pangolins, as with other range countries poaching for meat and scales is still ongoing in Nepal (Challender et al., 2020).This study supported previous studies (Paudel et al., 2020;Sharma et al., 2020) which identified Bagmati and Koshi provinces as hot-spots for the illegal wildlife trade from Kathmandu to China.Local people were found to be involved in illegal hunting for local use as well as illegal wildlife trade (Challender et al., 2015).The main driving force for this crime was a superstitious local belief system (Spash, 1997), and the use of pangolin derivatives in traditional medicine (Katuwal et al., 2016).Most of the respondents from Madhesh and Lumbini provinces were aware of the legislation protecting pangolins, however, they reported that local people were still involved in pangolin poaching due to the close proximity of the open border to India.In fact, this study found that at the western parts of country adjacent to the open Nepal-India border (Gandaki Province, Lumbini Province and Karnali Province), both locals and outsiders were reported to be involved in the illegal hunting and trade of pangolins.International collaborations to combat pangolin trafficking should therefore include strengthening the enforcement of existing regulations.In addition, behavior change programs that educate and empower local people could motivate communities towards pangolin conservation (Challender et al., 2014).
This study suggested that large-scale social data on attitudes towards species conservation could help identify the gaps and loopholes where efforts are needed at a country-wide level.Our results suggest three potential directions for future interventions to plan research and conservation on pangolins in Nepal.First, there is a particular need for pangolin-focused research, awarenessraising and education programs in provinces where negative attitudes and high levels of threats to the species are prevalent.Also, it is really important to empower those people and communities which have already positive attitudes towards pangolins and their conservation to contribute to that species conservation, as they care and are and interested across the country.Second, local people working in every sector and those without formal and informal education could be pivotal in supporting the pangolin conservation efforts at their respective local level.Third, cross-sector interventions are crucial to promoting co-existence between pangolins and humans, and there is still a need to develop and strengthen conservation strategies for pangolins with the active participation of local communities.

F
I G U R E 1 Nepal's seven federal provinces showing districts and topographical divisions of Mid-hill and Terai regions.
T A B L E 1 The demographic background of interviewed respondents in two topographical regions; Terai (n = 499) and Mid-hill (n = 518) in 2020

F
I G U R E 2 Perception of pangolins populations trends in different provinces (a) and topographical regions (b).F I G U R E 3 Perceptions of major threats to pangolins in different provinces (a) and topographical regions (b).