17 August 2026

Introducing the Lost Mammals Initiative

Hello everyone. As I mentioned in my post last week on plans for the future, I am pleased to unveil the Lost Mammals initiative.

Lost & Found

As you can, this is a list of mammal species that are either lost or very poorly known. Most of them have not been seen for many years. You, the world’s mammalwatchers, are the perfect people to rediscover them.

The list covers a broad set of mammals from the tiny Thor’s Hero Shrew to the 100kg Saola. Carlos Bocos, Charles Foley, Ellen Linton and Venkat Sankar – the mammalwatching illuminati – helped select the final set. It was a difficult selection, because so many mammals are missing. These species were chosen because they cover a wide geography, occur – or might occur – in mainly accessible areas, and on the basis that they ought to be identifiablein the field and can confirmed through photographs. And also – let’s be honest – because we think they are cool and want to seem them ourselves.

We’ve also included a few ‘found’ species that this community has rediscovered to showcase what we have already achieved.

As an added incentive to go looking – beyond your chance at immortality in mammalwatching Valhalla, or at least on this website – we are planning to offer prizes for those who are successful.

Carlos Bocos’s new Mammalia Tours has already stepped up to offer a free place on one of their trips to the first person under the age of 35 who rediscovers a species on this list. Fitting indeed, as Carlos himself has been instrumental in rediscovering a bunch of mammals in the past few years including the Pygmy Long-finged Triok in West Papua, which was though not just to be lost, but extinct for 6,000 years! So if you win a trip with Carlos you have every chance of discovering another species on the list.

As Ellen Linton – who did most of the work in preparing this list and writing up the species accounts – wisely notes “Anyone familiar with Carlos’s tours should be foaming at the mouth over this prize, which is the only reasonable reaction to such an opportunity “.

We are looking for other sponsors to show their support and offer prizes. Tour companies, optics companies – or anyone really – reading this please let me know if you would like to come on board to support the search.

I also want to say thank you to Lynx Nature Books, who publish the superb Handbook of the Mammals of the World, for generously allowing us to use their artwork for the lost species (photographs, by definition, were largely not available).

We hope that this list will inspire mammalwatchers to take a trip into the unknown. Whether or not you succeed in your quest, the adventure of a lifetime is pretty much guaranteed.

We will keep you updated as more prizes and sponsors come on board.

Is anyone already inspired to go searching? And does anyone want to places bets on which of these will be found first?

 

Jon

Cover art: Red Crested Tree Rat, last seen in Colombia in 2011. Toni Llobet, © Lynx Nature Books, Source: Handbook of the Mammals of the World, Volume 6: Lagormorphs and Rodents I

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Jon Hall
Genetically Welsh, spiritually Australian, currently in New York City. I’ve also lived and worked in London, Canberra, Paris and Lusaka, and watched mammals in over 100 countries.
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