Searching for the final saola

February 15, 2024 — “I’ve seen grown males decreased to tears within the Annamite Mountains,” says wildlife biologist Lorraine Scotson of the mountain vary alongside the border of Laos and Vietnam. “[Men] who’re bodily match and actually robust, adventurous varieties.” There’s a “claustrophobia that will get launched” if you’re in these forest-covered mountains, she says.
“You then’ve received the leeches and the ticks and the horseflies and the entire mosquitoes biting,” Scotson says. “It’s like the entire forest is out to get you.”
Scotson is aware of the Annamite Mountains properly. She’s spent nearly 20 years within the jungles of Southeast Asia finding out bears. Now, because the CEO of the Saola Basis, she’s on a distinct mission within the Annamites: find what is probably going the world’s most elusive massive land mammal, the saola.
Solely found by Western scientists in 1992, the animal, which scientists imagine is of course uncommon and low density, has grow to be so endangered {that a} tracker with the Saola Basis, Maiy Thammanan, says few native individuals even know of it — although older residents usually tend to, resulting from “direct expertise catching saola by snaring and looking canines.” However information of the saola to the West got here as a shock, akin to the discovering of the okapi in 1901.

Native residents knew of the saola earlier than Western scientists first realized of it in 1992. Nevertheless, as a result of the animal is so uncommon, few know it now aside from older residents, who a Saola Basis tracker says usually tend to know of its existence resulting from “direct expertise catching saola by snaring and looking canines.” Photograph © 2002 William Robichaud
There may be nothing on Earth just like the saola — a real megafauna at round 200 kilos (90 kilograms), with two lengthy curving horns as much as 20 inches (50 centimeters) and placing white face markings. Superficially, it resembles an African antelope, like a bongo or an oryx. However the saola will not be an antelope; as a substitute, it’s extra intently associated to wild cattle. Nonetheless, it’s so distinct from each different bovid that it sits alone in its personal genus, Pseudoryx.
Since 1992, the saola has solely been documented a handful of occasions, together with a pair animals briefly held in captivity and a pair others caught on digicam entice. The final conclusive proof the saola nonetheless existed was in 2013 when one was photographed by a digicam entice.
Now, a crew of trackers with the Saola Basis is hoping to alter that. The expedition, presently ongoing within the Annamite Mountains, entails a singular pairing of high-tech and natural-tech techniques, utilizing in-field DNA detectors, monitoring canines, and native and worldwide specialists.
A pure query to such an effort for an animal that is perhaps extinct is: Why do it? Why put all this vitality into looking for the saola?
However for William Robichaud, co-founder of the Saola Basis and the world’s main knowledgeable on the animal, that’s not the correct query. “No person ever asks the guards and the curators of the Van Gogh Museum at Amsterdam, ‘Why are you doing all this work to save lots of [his paintings]?’” Robichaud says.
That stated, the intrinsic worth of the animal apart, Robichaud, who spent a short time with a captured saola dubbed Martha earlier than she died in 1996, notes that the muse’s effort is about way more than the saola.

In 1996, William Robichaud, co-founder of the Saola Basis, spent a short time with a captured saola dubbed Martha earlier than she died in captivity. Photograph © 1996 Robichaud
“We’re growing a subject crew not like something that’s ever been seen in Southeast Asia earlier than. It’s extraordinary,” he says. “This method has by no means been tried earlier than in Laos and breaks from the normal mannequin of relying completely on worldwide experience.” He additional notes that nobody has mixed detection canines, skilled trackers, native indigenous ecologists and subject DNA checks earlier than.
Robichaud thinks the muse’s mannequin might assist in efforts to trace different endangered species within the area, akin to Edwards’s pheasant, Owston’s civet, red-shanked douc langur and the large-antlered muntjac.

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“We would like this crew to be collectively for the subsequent 20, 30, 40 years engaged on conservation initiatives in Laos, within the Annamites, and serving as a regional mannequin for different NGOs,” Robichaud says. “We’re this tiny little saola basis barely with two nickels to rub collectively, however we’re determining how to do that. Perhaps different NGOs will take discover and begin copying what we’ve achieved as a result of we predict it’s fairly profitable.”
One recreation changer in how the Saola Basis is pursuing their quarry is a bespoke DNA subject tester created by the Wildlife Conservation Society Molecular Diagnostics Lab. It’s groundbreaking due to its velocity. When the crew finds scat that is perhaps from a saola — and never that of different animals within the area — they take it again to base camp to be examined, with outcomes accessible in simply an hour.

Although it could look unassuming, this bepoke DNA tester is permitting the Saola Basis to do work within the subject that may in any other case take months. “With out [the new] gadget, none of this could be attainable,” says Lorraine Scotson, CEO of the Saola Basis. Photograph by Souksamlan Laladeth/Saola Basis
“It’s primarily similar to a COVID take a look at. The consequence comes again saola, not saola,” says Scotson. Previous to the brand new in-field DNA tester, she says, it will take months to get a consequence. Researchers must carry the pattern out of the forest and transport it to a metropolis, the place they’d get permission to mail it to a lab abroad. By that time, even when the take a look at got here again optimistic for saola, it will not be significantly helpful for monitoring the animal. “With out [the new] gadget, none of this could be attainable.”
Nevertheless, monitoring the animal is simply one of many group’s targets. That monitoring shall be adopted by what would possibly look like an audacious plan for an animal that has been dubbed the “Asian unicorn” resulting from its practically legendary elusiveness: starting a captive-breeding program in Laos.
“We don’t simply want one saola, we’d like a breeding inhabitants,” says Scotson.
Capturing the animals is dangerous, however conservationists imagine it’s the very best probability to maintain the saola from extinction.

In 1996, a feminine saola dubbed Martha was briefly held in captivity earlier than she died. Photograph © 1996 William Robichaud
The muse is working off years of analysis and advocacy by the Saola Working Group, part of the IUCN. The group’s evaluation confirmed that the saola is probably going among the many most endangered land mammals on the planet and helped persuade each vary international locations, Vietnam and Laos, that captive breeding is the very best path ahead to keep away from the worst case state of affairs for the saola.
Earlier than seize, the crew should first monitor the animals to raised perceive their actions and desires. “The primary saola will actually be just like the instructor and permit us to coach Saola-specific canines, study its habits, motion sample, ecology and likewise how you can determine its tracks, as a result of in the meanwhile it’s largely guesswork,” Scotson says.
Conservationists concern that snaring, which has worn out tigers from Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, will do the identical to the saola. Hunters lay 1000’s of metallic snares within the area which are like land mines to animals. The snares can lie within the foliage for years till one thing, possibly a saola, will get caught in a single and dies slowly, usually of thirst.

Snares pose an enormous risk to animals, akin to this endangered large-antlered muntjac, within the Annamites Mountains, as hunters lay 1000’s of them within the area. Based on Robichaud, it doesn’t matter if the animal is rotted when hunters return to the snares, as a result of the poachers are largely on the lookout for objects invaluable in Chinese language medication, akin to cat bones, pangolin scales or deer antlers. Photograph © 2009 by William Robichaud
“The primary downside is organized poacher gangs in Vietnam crossing the border within the forest of Laos,” says Robichaud. “They’ll set lots of or 1000’s of snares. Then they return to Vietnam for like a month or two, after which they only come again and examine the snare strains.”
It doesn’t matter if the animal is rotted, Robichaud says, as a result of the poachers are largely on the lookout for objects invaluable in Chinese language medication, akin to cat bones, pangolin scales or deer antlers. They aren’t even on the lookout for the saola.
However the Saola Basis expedition is, and it’s not simple. “The slopes are actually steep, the forest tangled, the rocks slippery, the locations the place we have to go don’t have paths. Undiagnosed fevers and infections [are] a certainty,” says Rob Timmins, the technical director of the muse.

The terrain within the Annamite Mountains might be treacherous and onerous to navigate, as these distant karsts recommend. It’s not onerous to see how some species might stay nearly fully hidden from people. Photograph by Souksamlan Laladeth/Saola Basis
One crew member needed to be evacuated with dengue fever. One other received trench foot as a result of endlessly moist circumstances, and a landslide cut up the crew for every week throughout the wet season. At one level even a monitoring canine needed to be evacuated.
“[A team member] simply strapped the canine to his chest and simply marched out the forest with him,” Scotson says.

Robichaud thinks the muse’s mannequin might assist in efforts to trace different endangered species within the area, such because the red-shanked douc. Photograph By Bjørn Christian Tørrissen, licensed underneath CC BY-SA 3.0
Nonetheless, it’s not all disagreeable. Onkeo Khamphavongsa, one other tracker, describes the enjoyment of waking to gibbons singing each morning or encountering teams of doucs — a kind of monkey — 10 to 40 robust.
The crew has already taken a photograph of a frog that’s seemingly beforehand unknown to Western science. There have additionally lengthy been rumors of a monkey that has but to be described by Western science within the distant karsts of the Annamite Mountains, primarily based on stories from villagers and observations from Timmins and different researchers. What’s wanted now’s photographic proof.
Timmins says he thinks they may in all probability discover a new species each day if that they had a full taxonomy crew.
After months of coaching, the crew is now getting into deep habitat the place the forest is doubtlessly wholesome sufficient — and distant sufficient — to nonetheless include saola. Whereas they haven’t detected the animal but, Robichaud says they’re seeing indicators of an abundance of different species that nobody would have anticipated, together with lots of of scat and visible sightings of serow, a goat-antelope.

Extraordinarily elusive, the saola has solely been captured on digicam entice a few occasions, together with right here in 1999 and once more in 2013, which was the final conclusive proof the saola nonetheless existed. Photograph © William Robichaud
However the query stays: Is the saola even on the market? Or has it vanished within the final 10 years? The Saola Basis estimates that the potential habitat of the animal is the scale of New Jersey, however factors to an evaluation that exhibits solely about 2% of that potential habitat has been intensively, and subsequently sufficiently, explored for the saola.
Robichaud, who lives in Wisconsin, factors out simply how stealthy even massive animals might be. He says the second looking season begins in his residence state, swiftly, the 1.6 million white-tailed deer that stay there are nearly unimaginable to seek out.
“That’s what I take into consideration,” he says. “I can’t even discover a white-tailed deer in rural Wisconsin as soon as the looking season begins.”
The crew stays satisfied the saola continues to be on the market, its secrets and techniques ready to be found and, with some luck, its future ensured. However even when the search fails and the saola has been misplaced to time, many different needy species await, and Robichaud expects the crew’s mannequin shall be useful in future endeavors to seek out and shield them.
“Laos is a Buddhist nation,” says Robichaud, “and the Buddha stated no good effort is wasted.”