BBC’s Natural World inspires York artist to help pangolins

Artist Dean Leybourn, and chocolate maker Karen Waller are part of a team including Nigeria-based conservationist and founder of Pangolins International, Maria Diekmann, launching a collection of 11,000 digital art NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) to fund the creation of an international network of pangolin conservation centres designed to help combat the effects of poaching on the animals which are sometimes known as scaly anteaters.

York artist Dean Leybourn is part of the NiFTy Pangolins NFT project (Image: UGC)

Dean and blockchain developer, Mark Meredith, proposed the NFT fund-raising concept to Maria after seeing her work featured in an episode of the BBC’s Natural World. She immediately gave the project the green light, seeing how it could expedite her plans for integrated multi-regional pangolin conservation.

She said: “This isn’t just another charity fundraiser.

"This is conservation as it’s never been done before. Our project won’t just bring conservationists closer together, it’ll expand our community to include anyone who buys an NFT, allowing owners to get to know both the pangolins and the conservationists, and see what we’re achieving on a daily basis.”

“The NFT space is maturing,” said Dean, “and there’s a growing desire to look beyond their initial use solely as investment vehicles. We want to harness this energy to build a community determined to drive positive change in the real world – a key point of difference from most NFT collections.”

One of the NiFTy Pangolins in production (Image: UGC)

Meredith said: “NFTs are typically purchased with cryptocurrency, but we’ll also be offering a payment card purchase option to allow a more mainstream audience to join the NiFTy Pangolins community, providing an easy way for crypto newbies to get into NFTs, support our cause and help raise awareness for pangolins.”

Karen, who until recently ran vegan chocolate shop Tempt in High Petergate in York, has joined the team to help with communications.

Chocolatier Karen Waller and Jordan Murphy outside Tempt

Pangolins are the world’s most trafficked mammals, with poachers selling them on to the Asian black market for their meat and scales, which are a valuable ingredient in traditional medicine. Over 100,000 pangolins are poached each year and, because it has typically been extremely difficult to successfully raise them in captivity, their numbers are plummeting. All 8 remaining species appear on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species, with 3 classified as Critically Endangered. It’s estimated that pangolins will be extinct by the end of this decade if conservation efforts are not increased immediately.

One of the NiFTy Pangolins (Image: UGC)

However, Maria’s research has now delivered ground-breaking methods which enable pangolins to be successfully rehabilitated and reared in captivity, prior to release back into their natural environment. Sales from the pangolin NFTs will fund the creation of a coordinated network of well-equipped pangolin conservation centres, all working to the same set of standards, using the same methodologies, and exchanging data and knowledge. Each centre will recruit from the local community and serve as an education hub.UK-based

Sales of the NiFTy Pangolins NFT collection are underway at www.niftypangolins.com.