Camera traps set up in a remote corner of the Central Annamite mountains by World Wildlife Fund biologists have taken images of the saola (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis), one of the rarest mammals on Earth.
Female saola in Laos, 1996. Image credit: © William Robichaud.
Discovered in May 1992 in Vietnam, the saola is a cousin to the antelope, cow and goat. The animal is dubbed the Asian unicorn because it is so rarely seen.
Adult saolas are recognized by two parallel horns with sharp ends, which can reach 50 cm in length. They stand at 85 cm tall and over 1.5 m long, weighing 80 – 100 kg.
“When our team first looked at the photos we couldn’t believe our eyes. Saola are the holy grail for South-east Asian conservationists so there was a lot of excitement. This is a breath-taking discovery and renews hope for the recovery of the species,” said Dr Van Ngoc Thinh, Country Director of World Wildlife Fund-Vietnam.
The last confirmed record of a saola in the wild was in 1999 from camera-trap photos taken in the Laos province of Bolikhamxay.
In 2010, villagers in Bolikhamxay captured a saola.
“In Vietnam, the last sighting of a saola in the wild was in 1998,” said Dang Dinh Nguyen, Deputy Head of Quang Nam Forest Protection Department and Director of Quang Nam’s Saola Nature Reserve.
Camera trap photo taken on September 7, 2013 shows a saola moving along a rocky forest valley stream in the Central Annamite mountains. Image credit: © WWF-Vietnam.
“This is an historic moment in Vietnam’s efforts to protect our extraordinary biodiversity, and provides powerful evidence of the effectiveness of conservation efforts in critical saola habitat.”
The saola’s elusive nature has prevented scientists from making a precise population estimate.
Biologists said no more than a few hundred, and maybe only a few tens, survive in the remote, dense forests along the Vietnam-Laos border.
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Bibliographic information: Vu Van Dung et al. 1993. A new species of living bovid from Vietnam. Nature 363, 443-445; doi: 10.1038/363443a0
