Only hillbilly hunters have ever seen one alive

Only hillbilly hunters have ever seen one alive

Vietnam is to set up a nature reserve for unfeasibly rare – possibly now extinct – two-horned "unicorns".

No more unicorn hunting. By order

The creature in question is more formally known as the saola. It is informally referred to as being unicorn-like for its extreme rarity: no scientist has ever seen a live saola and its existence was only confirmed some 20 years ago. In some circles the saola is thought to be responsible for Chinese legends regarding the qilin, a fantastical
creature equivalent to the unicorn in European lore.

The last saola encounter took place last year, when a single male was captured by Laotian villagers. Unfortunately the creature died before government scientists could intervene.

Prior to that occurrence, the last confirmation of the saola's existence came in 1999, when automatic camera traps recorded the elusive creatures in their sole habitat – the dense high forests of the Annamite (Truong Son) Mountains along the Laos/Vietnam border, where once the People's Army of Vietnam* marched along the Ho Chi Minh Trail to war against the Americans.

Now the Vietnamese authorities say they will institute a 60 square mile sanctuary for the saola in the forests of Quang Nam province, along the Laotian border. Measures will be put in place to stop the local mountaineer villagers hunting the rare creatures. The hill folk are often of different ethnic background to the main Vietnamese
population, and relations between them and the government haven't always been entirely cordial.

"For ethnic minority people, hunting is a way of earning their living," Quang Nam provincial forestry chief Pham Thanh Lam tells the Associated Press.

"They would not spare the saola, so it's necessary to create conditions for them to earn their living to minimise hunting." This will be done by means of educational programmes and creation of jobs for locals in running the reserve, according to the Vietnamese officials. The local authorities believe that as many as 60 saola may
survive in the high forests, though it is always possible that the one which died last year was the last.

Pic at site:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/19/unicorn_sanctuary/

The saola: rushing to save the most 'spectacular zoological discovery' of the 20th Century

http://news.mongabay.com/2011/0404-hance_robichaud.html

The saola: rushing to save the most 'spectacular zoological discovery' of the 20th Century

Jeremy Hance

mongabay.com

April 04, 2011

The saola (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis) may be the most enigmatic, beautiful, and endangered big mammal in the world—that no one has ever heard of. The shy ungulate looks like an African antelope—perhaps inhabiting the wide deserts of the Sahara—but instead it lives in the dense jungles of Vietnam and Laos, and is more related to wild cattle than Africa's antelopes. The saola is so unusual that is has been given its own genus: Pseudoryx, due to its superficial similarities to Africa's oryx. In the company of humans this quiet forest dweller acts calm and tame, but has yet to survive captivity long. Yet strangest of all, the 200 pound (90 kilogram) animal remained wholly unknown to science until 1992.

"[The saola] was perhaps the most spectacular zoological discovery of the 20th century (at least among vertebrates). The only comparable discovery was the okapi of central Africa in 1900. The okapi is like the saola in many ways—a highly distinctive, solitary ungulate dwelling in deep forest, utterly unknown to the outside world until relatively late. But it was found almost a century before saola," explains William Robichaud in an interview with mongabay.com. Robichaud is Coordinator of the Saola Working Group and one of the world's foremost experts on the animal.

"How many other terrestrial species in the world the size of a saola […] have never been seen in the wild by a biologist?" asks Robichaud. "None, surely."

Yet, few mammals in the world are as imperiled as the saola. No one knows whether 100 or 500 survive, but the number isn't high and the population is declining. Having only known of the species for less than 20 years, conservationists have a considerable problem on their hand: they have little time, working with scant information, to save a species that few people have ever heard of.

According to Robichaud the biggest threat to saola is hunting, but the " saola is killed largely as by-catch: a tuna and dolphins scenario." In this case, snares set in the jungle for other species have pushed the saola to the edge of extinction.

"Ironically, saola is one of the only wild Southeast Asian mammals bigger than a squirrel without a significant price on its head," Robichaud explains. "The Chinese never knew saola, and so it does not appear in their traditional pharmacopeia. This offers substantial hope for the animal's conservation. Unlike, say, rhinos, poachers are not racing conservationists to the last saola. "

Conservation projects to save the species are moving forward. A fund has been set up to provide base funding for the next 30 years; WWF-Vietnam is working on training rangers; and the saola was recently named a focal species for the Zoological Society of London's EDGE program, which will give the saola a bigger profile as well as material aid.

In other good news, last year a saola was brought into a local village giving researchers the first material evidence of the saola's survival in over ten years (camera trap photos were taken in 1999). Unfortunately, as with other saolas, the animal quickly perished in captivity.

"It was highly significant for generating renewed interest the animal, and convincing donors and other partners that it still exists," says Robichaud who was fortunate enough to spend time with another captured saola. "We know, from detailed information provided by local villagers (who, incidentally, are more likely to hide information about saola than exaggerate it) that saola are still out there; in other words, it was the first sighting in 10 years by biologists or westerners, but not by villagers."

Saving the saola would also benefit a wide array of endangered and little-known animals, some with evolutionary histories as unique in the saola's. Numerous discoveries over the past couple decades have proven that the saola's stomping ground, the Annamite Mountains, is rich in weird and wild species found no-where else—from a bald songbird to a prehistoric rodent to a striped rabbit.

Robichaud, who has spent decades working in Laos, says that it has been easy to convince local people to save the saola once they realize they safeguard the world's only population.

"They'll commonly ask, 'But doesn't America have lots of saola, or that place we heard about with lots of wild animals, Africa?' When they learn that the answer is no, and that saola isn't found even in neighboring Thailand or China, or even other provinces of Laos, you can see a paradigm shift in their eyes. They begin to become proud of the animal, and the role they can have in its conservation. "

Saving the saola will be an uphill battle: there are none in captivity and only a small population left in the wild; threats are only increasing, as evidenced by the Ho Chi Minh road plans; the animal is little known even in the conservation community; and the impetus across Asia is development at any cost, not conservation for future generations. It wouldn't be surprising in a decade or two to read that the long-unknown saola had vanished into the jungle's shadows for good.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be this way.

"What are we waiting for?" asks Robichaud. "For those wishing to make a significant, incremental contribution to conservation of the earth's biodiversity, among species it is hard to imagine a more compelling focus than saola."

In an April 2011 interview William Robichaud discussed the surprise of the saola's discovery, the threats this species faces, the conservation efforts being put together, and spending time with a saola dubbed 'Martha'.

Plus interview at site

Indiana Jones and the Sasquatch of Doom

A female saola or Vu Quang ox (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis). One of the world's rarest mammals, it is a forest-dwelling bovine found only in Vietnam (Vu Quang Nature Reserve) and in Laos, near the Vietnam-Laos border
Image: Bolikhamxay Provincial Conservation Unit. [bovidize]

The recent discovery of the saola - a large mammal - shows that we don't know everything ... that big mysteries still await

They get you, don't they? Those big, unanswered questions of existence. What is dark matter? How did the universe get started? Why is Miley Cyrus? Who put the Benzedrine in Mrs Murphy's Ovaltine?

Science presented as a list of pre-digested facts that we must obediently learn is rightly condemned as dull - but that's not what science is about. No, science is a long list of unanswered questions, a voyage into the unknown, a quest to reach for things slightly beyond our grasp. Be honest, now: who'd really rather go on an adventure with Indiana Jones than be lectured at by Richard Dawkins?

Even today, when science is so often a world of pristine laboratories and humming machinery, the old-fashioned, down-and-dirty spirit of adventure pokes through.

Just when you'd imagine that everyone has an iPod, and that we'd shaken every tree and looked behind every bush on the planet, some creature walks into view that is entirely new to science.

Not tiny creatures, either, such as sea urchins living obscurely on the ocean floor, miles below the surface; or near-microscopic wasps that lay their eggs in the pupae of jungle-living butterflies; or bacteria only found in sulphurous slag heaps. Sure, such things are being found all the time, and each and every one is a wonder. Oh noes, I'm talking about big creatures that everyone would recognise as such, living on land accessible to people with no special equipment except their own eyes.

As recently as 1993, a scientific paper landed on my desk at Nature describing a species of antelope hitherto unknown to science. And not some cute little creature that could slip between your knees and hide coyly behind a leaf, but a beast big enough to bump into, and do you serious injury if it stepped on your foot. How could people in this overcrowded world have missed it?

The location was a start. The saola, for such is its name (its more formal handle is Pseudoryx nghetinhensis), comes from the remote and deeply inaccessible Annamite Mountains on the border between Laos and Vietnam, a kind of Lost World known for hosting other rare species. Even if you can hack your way in, the saola is pathologically shy, and goes out of its way to go out of its way.

The scientific description was not based on a live animal, or even a dead one, but hunting trophies - horns, skulls and skins of several animals collected from the houses of local hunters. The live animal had not been seen. To my perhaps jaded editorial eye, the report seemed to have come straight out of King Solomon's Mines. How romantic!

The saola is, in fact, so shy and secretive that it wasn't until 1998 that it was photographed alive in the wild - and then only fleetingly. In 1999 it disappeared from view altogether. It was only in September 2010 that a live saola was captured. It obligingly stayed alive long enough to pose for its portrait whereupon it expired, presumably unaccustomed it its unwanted celebrity. The number of saola in existence is unknown, but it is likely to be small, and getting smaller all the time.

The saola joins a select band of large mammals discovered relatively recently, all of which are (not surprisingly) rare to the point of vanishment. A wild pig, the Chacoan peccary, Catagonus wagneri, was known only from fossils until it turned up on the wild borders of Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina in 1975, and is believed to be hanging on by its trotters.

A wild ox called the kouprey, Bos sauveli, a cousin to the saola, was described in Cambodia in 1937. There were around 1,000 of them in 1940; down to around 100 in 1969; and it hasn't been seen at all since 1983. This strongly suggests extinction, as creatures as big and beefy as the kouprey would be hard to miss.

Other creatures hardly touch the zoology texts before disappearing entirely: the red gazelle, Eudorcas rufina, is only known from skins discovered in Algerian souks in the nineteenth century. It has never been seen alive.

That such large creatures roamed the Earth until present times before dying out is a reminder of humanity's remorseless conquest - hackneyed, to be sure, only because of its frequency of repetition. But there's a wider point to be made here, about how little we know even about large mammals (let along squashy creatures from the abyss, or microbes), and the degree to which the documentation of recently extinct creatures grades from certain knowledge into myth. The Chacoan peccary was known from fossils until live ones were found. The saola was described from trophies before live examples were seen. The red gazelle is only known from such trophies. And where antelopes, oxen and pigs lead, humans will follow.

If stone tools are any guide, human beings - of one sort or another - have been living on the relatively far-flung island of Flores in Indonesia for a million years at least. By "one sort or another" I mean exactly that - as far as we know, modern humans didn't arrive on Flores until a little before 10,000 years ago. The previous residents were (presumably) related to the extinct form Homo erectus.

The announcement in 2004 of an entirely unknown species of extinct human that lived on Flores - Homo floresiensis, or "The Hobbit" - caused a sensation.

The small size and unique morphology of this creature is still a field of battle between those who contend that it is a real species, against those who think it is a diseased form of modern human. But what is really remarkable is the age. Initial findings showed that H. floresiensis lived on Flores from before 38,000 years ago to as recently as 18,000 years ago. Further work extended the range from as long ago as 95,000 years to as recently as 12,000 years ago.

Given the great age of the Earth, 12,000 years is very much less than an eyeblink. That an animal became extinct 12,000 years ago, or yesterday, hardly matters, for in the great scheme of things, this difference is insignificant. If the Chacoan peccary came to life from fossils, and if the saola emerged alive - if only just - from the Annamites, it is entirely legitimate to ask whether H. floresiensis, or something like it, still exists, or, perhaps, became extinct in historical times: a human version of the red gazelle, perhaps.

And if one admits H. floresiensis to the canon, what of other celebrated mythical beasts - if not necessarily Nessie, then the orang pendek of Malaysia? The yeti? The sasquatch? Bigfoot? Are all such creatures the products of delusion, conspiracy theories and hoax? Perhaps - but not necessarily. The little we know of those large mammals on the fringes of knowledge suggests that they live in remote places, are very shy, are extremely rare, and that to find them before they become extinct requires a degree of luck. So far, no hard evidence for yetis (say) has emerged. But in a world that hosts H. floresiensis and the saola, the kouprey and the red gazelle, one should keep an open mind.

Henry Gee is a senior editor of Nature. He blogs at The End Of The Pier Show. He will be speaking at the Grant Museum, University College London, on 26 October. [630pm; UCL Darwin Lecture Theatre; free admission]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/punctuated-equilibrium/2010/oct/05/saola-homo-floresiensis

Indiana Jones and the Sasquatch of Doom

A female saola or Vu Quang ox (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis). One of the world's rarest mammals, it is a forest-dwelling bovine found only in Vietnam (Vu Quang Nature Reserve) and in Laos, near the Vietnam-Laos border
Image: Bolikhamxay Provincial Conservation Unit. [bovidize]

The recent discovery of the saola - a large mammal - shows that we don't know everything ... that big mysteries still await

They get you, don't they? Those big, unanswered questions of existence. What is dark matter? How did the universe get started? Why is Miley Cyrus? Who put the Benzedrine in Mrs Murphy's Ovaltine?

Science presented as a list of pre-digested facts that we must obediently learn is rightly condemned as dull - but that's not what science is about. No, science is a long list of unanswered questions, a voyage into the unknown, a quest to reach for things slightly beyond our grasp. Be honest, now: who'd really rather go on an adventure with Indiana Jones than be lectured at by Richard Dawkins?

Even today, when science is so often a world of pristine laboratories and humming machinery, the old-fashioned, down-and-dirty spirit of adventure pokes through.

Just when you'd imagine that everyone has an iPod, and that we'd shaken every tree and looked behind every bush on the planet, some creature walks into view that is entirely new to science.

Not tiny creatures, either, such as sea urchins living obscurely on the ocean floor, miles below the surface; or near-microscopic wasps that lay their eggs in the pupae of jungle-living butterflies; or bacteria only found in sulphurous slag heaps. Sure, such things are being found all the time, and each and every one is a wonder. Oh noes, I'm talking about big creatures that everyone would recognise as such, living on land accessible to people with no special equipment except their own eyes.

As recently as 1993, a scientific paper landed on my desk at Nature describing a species of antelope hitherto unknown to science. And not some cute little creature that could slip between your knees and hide coyly behind a leaf, but a beast big enough to bump into, and do you serious injury if it stepped on your foot. How could people in this overcrowded world have missed it?

The location was a start. The saola, for such is its name (its more formal handle is Pseudoryx nghetinhensis), comes from the remote and deeply inaccessible Annamite Mountains on the border between Laos and Vietnam, a kind of Lost World known for hosting other rare species. Even if you can hack your way in, the saola is pathologically shy, and goes out of its way to go out of its way.

The scientific description was not based on a live animal, or even a dead one, but hunting trophies - horns, skulls and skins of several animals collected from the houses of local hunters. The live animal had not been seen. To my perhaps jaded editorial eye, the report seemed to have come straight out of King Solomon's Mines. How romantic!

The saola is, in fact, so shy and secretive that it wasn't until 1998 that it was photographed alive in the wild - and then only fleetingly. In 1999 it disappeared from view altogether. It was only in September 2010 that a live saola was captured. It obligingly stayed alive long enough to pose for its portrait whereupon it expired, presumably unaccustomed it its unwanted celebrity. The number of saola in existence is unknown, but it is likely to be small, and getting smaller all the time.

The saola joins a select band of large mammals discovered relatively recently, all of which are (not surprisingly) rare to the point of vanishment. A wild pig, the Chacoan peccary, Catagonus wagneri, was known only from fossils until it turned up on the wild borders of Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina in 1975, and is believed to be hanging on by its trotters.

A wild ox called the kouprey, Bos sauveli, a cousin to the saola, was described in Cambodia in 1937. There were around 1,000 of them in 1940; down to around 100 in 1969; and it hasn't been seen at all since 1983. This strongly suggests extinction, as creatures as big and beefy as the kouprey would be hard to miss.

Other creatures hardly touch the zoology texts before disappearing entirely: the red gazelle, Eudorcas rufina, is only known from skins discovered in Algerian souks in the nineteenth century. It has never been seen alive.

That such large creatures roamed the Earth until present times before dying out is a reminder of humanity's remorseless conquest - hackneyed, to be sure, only because of its frequency of repetition. But there's a wider point to be made here, about how little we know even about large mammals (let along squashy creatures from the abyss, or microbes), and the degree to which the documentation of recently extinct creatures grades from certain knowledge into myth. The Chacoan peccary was known from fossils until live ones were found. The saola was described from trophies before live examples were seen. The red gazelle is only known from such trophies. And where antelopes, oxen and pigs lead, humans will follow.

If stone tools are any guide, human beings - of one sort or another - have been living on the relatively far-flung island of Flores in Indonesia for a million years at least. By "one sort or another" I mean exactly that - as far as we know, modern humans didn't arrive on Flores until a little before 10,000 years ago. The previous residents were (presumably) related to the extinct form Homo erectus.

The announcement in 2004 of an entirely unknown species of extinct human that lived on Flores - Homo floresiensis, or "The Hobbit" - caused a sensation.

The small size and unique morphology of this creature is still a field of battle between those who contend that it is a real species, against those who think it is a diseased form of modern human. But what is really remarkable is the age. Initial findings showed that H. floresiensis lived on Flores from before 38,000 years ago to as recently as 18,000 years ago. Further work extended the range from as long ago as 95,000 years to as recently as 12,000 years ago.

Given the great age of the Earth, 12,000 years is very much less than an eyeblink. That an animal became extinct 12,000 years ago, or yesterday, hardly matters, for in the great scheme of things, this difference is insignificant. If the Chacoan peccary came to life from fossils, and if the saola emerged alive - if only just - from the Annamites, it is entirely legitimate to ask whether H. floresiensis, or something like it, still exists, or, perhaps, became extinct in historical times: a human version of the red gazelle, perhaps.

And if one admits H. floresiensis to the canon, what of other celebrated mythical beasts - if not necessarily Nessie, then the orang pendek of Malaysia? The yeti? The sasquatch? Bigfoot? Are all such creatures the products of delusion, conspiracy theories and hoax? Perhaps - but not necessarily. The little we know of those large mammals on the fringes of knowledge suggests that they live in remote places, are very shy, are extremely rare, and that to find them before they become extinct requires a degree of luck. So far, no hard evidence for yetis (say) has emerged. But in a world that hosts H. floresiensis and the saola, the kouprey and the red gazelle, one should keep an open mind.

Henry Gee is a senior editor of Nature. He blogs at The End Of The Pier Show. He will be speaking at the Grant Museum, University College London, on 26 October. [630pm; UCL Darwin Lecture Theatre; free admission]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/punctuated-equilibrium/2010/oct/05/saola-homo-floresiensis

'Asian unicorn' dies after capture in Laos

A saola, or 'Asian unicorn', like the one which died after villagers took it into captivity in a remote region of Laos. Photograph: Bolikhamxay Provincial Conservation Unit/PA

Rare saola caught by villagers and shown to conservationists was thought to be one of only a few hundred left in the wild

Helen Pidd and agencies
Thursday 16 September 2010
13.34 BST

It is one of the rarest animals in the world, a horned beast sighted so rarely it is nicknamed "the Asian unicorn".

So when villagers in a remote region of Laos became the first people in a decade to spot a saola they were keen to keep the antelope-like creature, which has large white streaks of fur that look like eyebrows.

But in their enthusiasm to protect it they may have killed the animal. It died last month after a few days in captivity, conservationists said.

The critically endangered mammal is found in the mountains of Vietnam and Laos. It was discovered in 1992.

The saola looks similar to the antelope of North Africa but is more closely related to wild cattle and is likened to the mythical unicorn because of its rarity.

It has never been seen by conservation experts in the wild and the last confirmed sighting was from automated cameras in 1999.

The species is listed as critically endangered, with just a few hundred thought to exist in the wild. There are none in zoos and almost nothing is known about how to keep them in captivity, meaning if they vanish in the wild they will be extinct.

The Lao government said villagers in the country's central province of Bolikhamxay captured the saola in late August and brought it to their village.

When news of the capture reached the authorities a team was sent, advised by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) to examine and release the animal.

But the adult male saola died shortly after the team reached the remote village. It was photographed while still alive.

The IUCN's saola expert William Robichaud said:

"We hope the information gained from the incident can be used to ensure that this is not the last saola anyone has a chance to see."

The provincial conservation unit of Bolikhamxay province said the animal's death was "unfortunate" but the incident confirmed an area where it was still found and the government would immediately strengthen conservation efforts there.

Dr Pierre Comizzoli, a member of the IUCN saola working group, said study of the animal's carcass could yield some good.

"Our lack of knowledge of saola biology is a major constraint to efforts to conserve it. This can be a major step forward in understanding this remarkable and mysterious species."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/16/saola-dies-after-capture-in-laos

See also: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1312558/Asian-unicorn-spotted-time-1999-DIES-captured.html

'Asian unicorn' dies after capture in Laos

A saola, or 'Asian unicorn', like the one which died after villagers took it into captivity in a remote region of Laos. Photograph: Bolikhamxay Provincial Conservation Unit/PA

Rare saola caught by villagers and shown to conservationists was thought to be one of only a few hundred left in the wild

Helen Pidd and agencies
Thursday 16 September 2010
13.34 BST

It is one of the rarest animals in the world, a horned beast sighted so rarely it is nicknamed "the Asian unicorn".

So when villagers in a remote region of Laos became the first people in a decade to spot a saola they were keen to keep the antelope-like creature, which has large white streaks of fur that look like eyebrows.

But in their enthusiasm to protect it they may have killed the animal. It died last month after a few days in captivity, conservationists said.

The critically endangered mammal is found in the mountains of Vietnam and Laos. It was discovered in 1992.

The saola looks similar to the antelope of North Africa but is more closely related to wild cattle and is likened to the mythical unicorn because of its rarity.

It has never been seen by conservation experts in the wild and the last confirmed sighting was from automated cameras in 1999.

The species is listed as critically endangered, with just a few hundred thought to exist in the wild. There are none in zoos and almost nothing is known about how to keep them in captivity, meaning if they vanish in the wild they will be extinct.

The Lao government said villagers in the country's central province of Bolikhamxay captured the saola in late August and brought it to their village.

When news of the capture reached the authorities a team was sent, advised by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) to examine and release the animal.

But the adult male saola died shortly after the team reached the remote village. It was photographed while still alive.

The IUCN's saola expert William Robichaud said:

"We hope the information gained from the incident can be used to ensure that this is not the last saola anyone has a chance to see."

The provincial conservation unit of Bolikhamxay province said the animal's death was "unfortunate" but the incident confirmed an area where it was still found and the government would immediately strengthen conservation efforts there.

Dr Pierre Comizzoli, a member of the IUCN saola working group, said study of the animal's carcass could yield some good.

"Our lack of knowledge of saola biology is a major constraint to efforts to conserve it. This can be a major step forward in understanding this remarkable and mysterious species."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/16/saola-dies-after-capture-in-laos

See also: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1312558/Asian-unicorn-spotted-time-1999-DIES-captured.html