The saola is currently considered to be critically endangered.[1] Its restrictive habitat requirements and aversion to human proximity are likely to endanger it through habitat loss and habitat fragmentation. Saola suffer losses through hunting for local trophy hunting and the illegal trade in furs, traditional medicines, and for use of the meat in restaurants and food markets.[17] They also sometimes get caught in snares that have been set to catch animals raiding crops, such as wild boar, sambar, and muntjac. More than 26,651 snares have so far been removed from Saola habitats by conservation groups.[18] 

The key feature of the area occupied by the saola is its remoteness from human disturbance.[19] Saola are shot for their meat, but hunters also gain high esteem in the village for the production of a carcass. Due to the scarcity, the locals place much more value on the saola than more common species. Because the people in this area are traditional hunters, their attitude about killing the saola is hard to change; this makes conservation difficult. The intense interest from the scientific community has actually motivated hunters to capture live specimens. Commercial logging has been stopped in the nature reserve area of Bu Huong, and there is an official ban on forest clearance within the boundaries of the reserve.[19]

Species of conservation concern are frequently hard to study; there are often delays in implementing or identifying necessary conservation needs due to lack of data.[20] Because the species is so rare, there is a continuous lack of adequate data; this is one of the major problems facing saola conservation. Trained scientists have never observed saola in the wild. Unfortunately, because it is unlikely that intact saola populations exist, field surveys to discover these populations are not a conservation priority.[20]

The Saola Working Group was formed by the IUCN Species Survival Commission's Asian Wild Cattle Specialist Group, in 2006[21] to protect the saolas and their habitat. This coalition includes about 40 experts from the forestry departments of Laos and Vietnam, Vietnam's Institute of Ecology and Biological Resources, Vinh University, biologists and conservationists from Wildlife Conservation Society, and the World Wide Fund for Nature.[22] 

A group of scientists from the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology in central Hanoi, within the Institute of Biotechnology, investigated a last resort effort of conserving the species by cloning, an extremely difficult approach even in the case of well-understood species.[3] However, the lack of huemul female donors, receptive females and the interspecific barriers greatly compromise the success of cloning technique.[23]

See also[edit]