Just more than a decade ago, the saola made headlines round the world. Scientists discovered the animal in the remote Vietnamese highlands, the first large mammal to have been found anywhere in the world in more than half a century.
Since then the creature, which looks like an antelope but is related to cattle, has been discovered in several areas across the country. In the late 1990s ecologists estimated about a thousand of these shy creatures, with their long pairs of distinctive black horns, were living in the Annamite hills of central Vietnam and Laos. The creature quickly became an icon for Vietnam’s fledgling environmental movement.
But not for much longer. Scientists working with the WWF discovered last month that in less than 10 years saola numbers had crashed to about 200. Even worse, population numbers are becoming so thin that prospects of them meeting and breeding are now becoming worryingly slim. Now Vietnamese scientists are locked in a bitter battle about how to save the saola.
The WWF team believes many saolas are being caught in snares for other creatures, such as bears, which are prized in the East for the ”healing properties” of their gall bladders. In addition, the saola is often hunted in its own right, so its distinctive head can be mounted as a trophy.
Scientists have been unable to breed saolas in captivity. About 20 have been captured but all died within a few weeks, with the exception of two that were released into the wild again. According to David Wildt, head of the Centre for Species Survival at the Smithsonian, near Front Royal, Virginia, this problem is not unexpected. ”Certain animals in captivity, especially ungulates, are highly sensitive to stress,” he told the journal Science.
Thus Vietnam has found it is close to achieving an unenviable ecological record: discovering a new species of large mammal and then rendering it extinct in a few years. It is a prospect that has so alarmed scientists they have launched the ultimate high-tech bid to save the stricken creature: they are planning to clone it.
The project is the idea of scientists at the Vietnamese Academy of Science and Technology in Hanoi. Led by Bui Xuan Nguyen, the team has already isolated saola DNA from tissue samples from creatures in the wild and, working with French scientists, have injected these into the eggs of cows, a goat and a swamp buffalo. Early saola embryos were successfully created this way, but all died after a few days.
”We don’t have any idea how to get past this stage,” Nguyen admitted to Science — the basic problem, he said, being a lack of knowledge about how saolas breed. ”We have no information on the reproductive cycle and no idea how long pregnancy lasts.”
However, he said that recent progress has been encouraging. Nguyen and other scientists remain confident they can clone the saola, a prospect that does little to impress other researchers. ”Cloning is a tool for last-ditch heroics,” said Wildt. ”It’s too premature to consider it.”
Or, as another ecologist put it: ”There is no conservation benefit from cloning the saola. The money would be better spent trying to protect the species in the wild.”
The saolas, which were once icons of conservation, are now almost extinct. — Guardian Unlimited Â