Expanding a nature-reserve for the Saola : The plight of the pangolin: One of the planet's most extraordinary and intelligent animals is being hunted to extinction - Nature - Environment - The Independent
Its like every animal out there is being hunted for food, medicine or the pet trade. When one animal becomes virtually extinct they substitute it with something else.
link from the Saola facebook page: Save the saola: Breeding center for rare mammal to open in Vietnam - VnExpress International
Agreed; a breeding centre for a species with zero records of long-term captive survival seems more than a tad over-optimistic...
Will be interesting to see if they can keep any long enough to do any breeding too. It may just fragment/reduce the population even further if they are brought into captivity only to die shortly after- the record so far.
There is another article here about the proposed captive-breeding programme for the saola. Something I found of interest was that, to give the team there a chance to test their methods of catching and moving a large mammal in the forest, they will also be capturing and beginning a breeding programme for the large-antlered muntjac deer, which is also Critically Endangered. Scientists hope to breed Asian ‘unicorns’ – if they can find them
So before attempting to breed a critically endangered, never before bred ungulate about which practically nothing is known, they're going to practice by attempting to breed another critically endangered, never before bred ungulate about which practically nothing is known? If it works, it will be a truly incredible conservation success story, but it doesn't exactly fill me with confidence...
that seemed a tad strange to me also. One would have thought that testing capture and transport methods on Common Muntjac (still relatively common in Vietnam, and globally not in any danger) would be most sensible. The breeding side of that would be irrelevant, so it wouldn't take long to make sure the methods used were safe. Then move on to Giant Muntjac, which can still be found at Bach Ma, to ensure it still works with a different species. I doubt the breeding of wild-caught Giant Muntjac would be any different to that of other muntjac species though. But establishing a captive population of those would be a good move regardless of any other objectives.
