VietNamNet Bridge – The reclusive Saola, measuring just some 85cm in height is, without doubt, one of the rarest mammals on the planet. Despite twenty years of intense searching, no Saola have yet been observed by a scientist in the wild.

Forest guard, Le Quoc Thien - Photo: Simon Speakman Cordall

Given the incredible rarity of the species, little is known about its habits and habitats. However, scientists are confident that the Annamite Mountains, spanning the border between Vietnam and Laos is where the Saola make their home.

Covering this area is the 12,153 hectares of the Saola Nature Reserve. That Saola, (sometimes called the Vietnamese Unicorn) live and breed within the reserve cannot be known for certain. However, such is the incredible rarity of the Saola that both the World Wide Fund for Nature, (WWF) and the Vietnamese Government have committed incredible resources into protecting the area where the Saola may, or may not, live.

Despite the legally protected status of the reserve, it still comes under daily threat from those seeking to illegally harvest its trees, fauna and wildlife. Protecting these treasures is the responsibility of the seventeen guards who patrol the forests and mountains of the reserve. It’s a hazardous job. Patrols regularly last up to seven days, with the guards camping in the forest throughout. Everything they need is carried into the forest on their backs. Sleeping in hammocks, suspended under a flysheet, it’s not a job for lovers of luxury.

Unlike other Vietnamese nature reserves, the threats to the Saola Nature Reserve come not from illegal industrial operations aimed at poaching goods for foreign markets, but from the culture and traditions of the local people used to viewing the forest as a natural resource with which to supplement what can be pretty meagre income. Le Ngoc Tuan, director of the Saola Nature Reserve explains that trees are most often logged by local farmers, or the Katu ethnic minority of the region. Loggers most often work in teams of up to around four. After an average of twenty days work, an illegally harvested tree will only be sold for about half the value it would fetch on the open market, about VND13 million, which must then be divided between the team. It’s hardly a fortune, but it does allow a glimpse of the hardships local people must endure to risk so much for so little.  With this desperation comes an additional threat to the guards.

Further to conflicts over illegal logging, similar clashes occur over poaching. Local people have, for centuries, viewed the vital forest lands as an extension of their own larders, regularly traveling into the forest to catch the Wild Boar, Sambar or Muntjac deer which live there. All these species play critical roles in maintaining the forest’s delicate ecosystem. However, perhaps of far more significantly, their snares and rock traps pose a very real threat to the Saola; actually capturing one, which shortly died, in the summer of 2010.

Twenty five year old Le Quoc Thien has been a forest guard for twenty one months. Graduating with a degree in forestry, he joined the reserve straight after leaving university. He explains that his job is as much about tackling cultural preconceptions as it is about enforcing the laws protecting the forest, “My job is to raise awareness of the forest’s importance to local people and the responsibility they have in protecting it”. Naturally, Thien and his colleagues are at risk from defensive poachers and loggers. However, the real threat to the guards comes from the forest itself. In Thien’s team, two members have fallen critically ill, one after being bitten by a lethal Green Snake. It can take two hours to get a stricken guard to the First Aid Station and sometimes that time can prove critical. Flood and fog are also very real hazards.  A team of guards was recently caught in a flash flood and were lucky to escape with their lives. Luong Viet Hung of the World Wide Fund for Nature, who help fund and train the guards, knows the dangers well. “When the weather is bad, I cannot sleep. All I can think of is the guards in the forest and hope that they will be OK.”

It can seem incredible, that these men would risk so much for an animal that few will see and none can guarantee even exists within the reserve. However, their dedication is overwhelming.  “I’m forever being asked if the Saola might be extinct, and all I can ever say is that we’re trying our best”. Tuan explained, “I hope we’ll see the Saola here, of course I do. It’s something I’m passionate about. I even named my daughter Saola”.

Source: SGT