The saola is the world’s rarest large mammal. It hasn’t been recorded since a trail camera captured an image of one in 2013, but it is believed that this elusive species still resides in the steep terrain of the Annamite Mountains between Vietnam and Lao – there just hasn’t been a comprehensive search for it yet.
This is the challenge being undertaken by the Saola Foundation. If it is still in Lao, they intend to find it – but time is running out.
“Even if we found one, we could learn so much. One saola teacher.”
Lorraine Scotson, Chief Executive Officer of Saola Foundation
The very idea of finding one saola holds so much hope for the team at the Saola Foundation, who are dedicated to finding one of the most elusive mammals in the world: the saola.
The status of the saola right now is critical – there could be 1-100 individuals still in the wild, spread across the vast, treacherous terrain of the Annamite Mountains. Though home to numerous species which cannot be found anywhere else in the world, it is laced with snares that have been emptying its vast forests at heart-breaking speed.
With such a small population, the chances of saola finding each other to breed successfully are now so slim, there has been unanimous agreement in the conservation community that the main priority must be a captive breeding programme – if any individuals can be found and captured.
The saola still remains much a mystery as it has never been studied in the wild, most information about wild saola is calculated guesswork. Image: Toon Fey
The search
The Saola Foundation team are throwing everything they can towards their single purpose: the search for saola. They have channelled their strategy into three methods of search: DNA analysis, sniffer dogs, and human trackers.
As the ranges of individual saola – like anything known about them, carefully guessed – are thought to be very wide, trail cam