Using a burgeoning technique never used before to detect golden moles, a team of conservationists and geneticists from the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) and the University of Pretoria, supported by Re:wild, announced the rediscovery of De Winton’s Golden Mole in 2023. The EWT-led team used environmental DNA (eDNA), which is the DNA that animals shed as they move through the environment, typically in the form of skin cells, hair and bodily excretions. In addition to living in largely inaccessible burrows, golden moles have extremely sensitive hearing and can detect vibrations from movement above ground, which helps them avoid being seen from the surface.  They also rarely leave tunnels behind that are visible from the surface as they move under the sand.

After collecting more than 100 soil samples in June 2021 from beaches and dunes on the northwest coast of South Africa —including Port Nolloth beach, the only place where De Winton’s golden mole had ever been found— and conducting a complex and comprehensive genetic analysis of each sample, the team determined that there were several species of golden mole living in the sand along the stretch of coast. When the team compared their eDNA sequences from Port Nolloth beach to a reference sequence, it was a clear match to De Winton’s golden mole. Photo by JP Le Roux.