Fifteen years had passed since the last time the species was last seen in the wild, but on the evening of September 7, camera traps placed by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Quang Nam provincial Forest Management Department spotted an individual saola moving along a stream in a remote area of the Truong Son mountain range.
"When I first looked at the photos, I could not believe in my eyes”, Dr. Van Ngoc Thinh, Director of WWF Vietnam said. "This is a breathtaking discovery, some people believe that the saola has disappeared in Vietnam forever and this recognition revives hope for the recovery of the species."
A rare antelope-like creature known locally as the Asian unicorn due to its rarity, the saola is identified by two parallel pointed horns that can grow up to 50cm in length.
In 1992, the animal was first discovered in Vu Quang National Park, near the border with Laos. It was the first discovery of an unknown large mammal species in more than 50 years.
Twenty years later, understanding of the ecology and behaviour of the saola is still very limited, and the difficulty of detecting the mysterious animal has prevented scientists from making accurate estimates on the species’ population. There are maybe around 200 or only a few dozen individual saola in the forests along the Vietnam-Laos border.
The last saola seen in the wild was confirmed in 1999 in Bolikhamxay province, Laos. Villagers in the province captured an individual in 2010 but it subsequently died.
In Vietnam, two saola were captured in the central region in 1993 but died in captivity after several months. The last sighting was recorded in 1998.
