The remains of four oryx-like endangered animals have been discovered by international wildlife experts in Vietnam, raising fears that the species, unique to Indochina, could soon become extinct.
Conservation group BirdLife International found the horns from the four sao la, or Pseudoryx nghetinhensis, in June on a research mission in the central province of Quang Binh, said team member Jack
Tordoff on Wednesday.
”We don’t know how many are left. But we do know that the population that is left are fragmented and declining and could be extinct before we find out any more on them.”
The sao la, a large species of mammal belonging to the bovid family, were only discovered by scientists from the World Wide Fund for Nature in 1992 in the Vu Quang nature reserve in Ha Tinh province, just north of Quang Binh.
The range of the straight-horned mammal is thought to encompass only around 4 000 square kilometres in forests of the Annamite mountains along the Vietnam-Laos border.
Tordoff said many ethnic minorities living in the region were unaware of the government’s ban on hunting them.
His team came across one set of horns in the house of a member of the Van Kieu hill tribe and from there learnt that two sao la had been killed this year, one last year and another three years ago.
However, he said they had probably been caught in traps by accident rather than for financial gain.
Unlike Asian elephants, clouded leopards, Javan rhinoceroses and other endangered mammals and birds in Vietnam hunted for their tusks, hide or medicinal value, the sao la have no intrinsic monetary value, Tordoff said.
”However, the sao la is one of the most endangered species in all of Asia. Most of its habitat has been destroyed for agricultural purposes. We are not confident that they will survive despite government efforts to protect them.”
Vietnam officially recognises 54 species of mammals and 60 species of birds as endangered, but its wildlife population is in a precipitous decline due to deforestation, pollution of waterways and poaching. – Sapa-AFP