Latest News on the Search for Saola and Saving Irreplaceable Biodiversity
Since the start of the year, the team has been hard at work in the continuing search for Saolas, knowing, as we all know, that time is ticking by fast in the race to save them.Our search is intensive and meticulous, and although it might not sound like a lot, in the first three months alone, the team covered approximately 10.5 square miles (27 km²), which amounts to well over 155 miles (250 km) of walking, carefully looking (and in the case of our dogs, smelling) for signs of Saolas. At the same time, they found, collected, and analyzed 478 dung samples, unfortunately none of which turned out to be from Saolas. The first six months of the year are the most productive for finding dung, which is our best opportunity for confirming the presence of Saolas; hence, the large number of samples. This is due to the lower prevalence of dung beetles and other factors, such as rain and fungi, that remove and break down dung. Because of this, the search continues at full pace before the heavy rains start in July. The rains, despite reducing the amount of dung detectable, make it easier for our animal trackers to trail fresh footprint tracks that could be those of a Saola and hopefully lead to dung or other DNA sources for testing.
Vanvay, Provincial Field Coordinator of the Saola Foundation, explaining about Saola and the conservation work of the Saola Foundation at a village community meeting
We have also been running an intensive recruitment campaign, visiting many remote villages in the Annamite Mountains to recruit new animal trackers and technical members for our Annamite Mountains Research and Conservation Team. The recruitment is not just about building our team but also about giving talented, passionate members of these local and indigenous communities opportunities to pursue a professional biodiversity conservation career and an opportunity to actively participate in and champion the conservation of their traditional forest lands.
Vanvay, Provincial Field Coordinator; Souksamlan (Toun), Audio-Visual Lead; and Chanthasone (Olay), Lao Programs Director, traveled by boat, tractor, motorbike, and at times on foot to engage with 15 villages to introduce career opportunities and build awareness of our strategy and goals. The recruitment was a great success, and following the initial stages, 6 promising candidates have been undergoing rigorous forest screening with the field team.
World Saola Day Is Approaching
World Saola Day (9th July) is an annual opportunity to raise global awareness of Saola and generate critical support for our search efforts that will determine its future. Time is running out for us to find evidence of a Saola in the wild. To critically help sustain our team in the field, we need help and have launched an urgent fundraising appeal across our global network. You can help us, by sharing our newsletter and social media posts within your own networks, and, if you are in a position to do so, donate.
Together, we can give this extraordinary species a chance. Thank you!
SEMINAR From Scents to Signs: Detection Dogs and Animal Tracking for Biodiversity Conservation
Join us on Thursday 2nd July as Renae Counter, Canine Field Specialist at Working Dogs for Conservation (WD4C), and Jonathan Shapiro, Professional and Specialist Tracker and Instructor from CyberTracker Conservation and Fox Paw School, discuss their approaches to biodiversity conservation through detection dogs and animal tracking in their partnership with the Saola Foundation. In this seminar, you will gain an overview of how detection dogs are trained and deployed to support species monitoring and conservation research, as well as the importance of sustained partnerships, follow-up support, and capacity building in developing successful conservation dog programs. You will also hear from Vatsana Chanthavong and To Duangkhamxai, co-Team Leaders of the Saola Foundation’s Scent Detection Dog Unit, who will provide a special update on how our Scent Detection Dogs, Bertie and Norman, are performing in the field. The seminar will also explore the role of animal tracking in conservation, demonstrating how tracking skills can be used to detect animal presence, monitor ecosystems, and inform conservation decision-making.
The talk is free, but registration is required, which you can do here. Local times for the talk are listed below.
Meet the Speakers
Renae Counter
Renae graduated from the University of Montana-Western with a B.A. in Literature and Writing with a focus on Creative Writing. Her career with working dogs began when she moved to Alaska to work as a dog handler on the Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau. Renae spent three summers on the Mendenhall, with winters in between caretaking a remote backcountry ski lodge in Colorado and later helping to train a team of young sled dogs for Squid Acres Kennel in Fairbanks, AK. After working with sled dogs, Renae knew she wanted a career with dogs. Before finding WD4C, she spent time working as a Veterinary Assistant and later training protection dogs.
Vatsana Chanthavong (left) and To Duangkhamxai (right) Saola Foundation Scent Detection Dog Unit Administrative Leader and Scent Detection Dog Unit Technical Leader
Jonathan Shapiro
Jonathan is a nature educator, tracking instructor, and wildlife consultant. His students are field biologists, conservation professionals, and passionate laypeople. He runs the Fox Paw School and the Southwest Wildlife Tracking Institute, and teaches natural history at Sterling College. He has been certified as a Specialist in Track & Sign, and a Professional in Trailing, by Tracker Certification North America. His other interests include hunting, fishing, running, reading books, and making crafts.
Seminar local times on Thursday 2nd July: 07:00 am US Pacific 08:00 am US Mountain 09:00 am US Central 10:00 am US Eastern 15:00 London 16:00 most of continental Europe 21:00 Vientiane/Hanoi/Bangkok 22:00: Singapore/Beijing/Hong Kong/Taipei
A recent spotlight by the History Channel on the Kha-nyou, a largely unknown endemic species of the Annamite Mountains Bioregion, brought much needed global interest to this unusual species and to the irreplaceable ecosystem it inhabits. However, we are compelled to raise a significant rebuttal to the History Channel’s unfortunate use of the name ‘Laotian Rock Rat’, a modern-day case of mistaken identity for this fantastic creature. The Kha-nyou, an ancient representative of the Order Rodentia, is many things, but it is NOT a rat!
I first came across the Kha-nyou on the 4th of February, 1996, during a morning visit to a fresh food market in central Lao PDR, where I’d gone especially to see what wild animals local inhabitants were hunting and selling. Within a matter of moments, and after a quick examination of the two Kha-nyou carcasses on the ground in front of me, I knew I was looking at an undescribed species to science. What I didn’t realise, however, was just how extraordinary, from a scientific perspective, the discovery of the Kha-nyou was. But standing in the morning market in early February, I at first wondered whether this creature could be allied to squirrel taxa in East Asia or the Sundas with which I was unfamiliar.
Rob Timmins exploring a marketplace in Lao
The Kha-nyou is about 26 cm in head and body length – a size very similar to an Eastern Gray Squirrel, Sciurus carolinensis, for those familiar – with short limbs, a densely-haired tail only about half the length of its head and body combined, and a long head with extremely long whiskers. It is various shades of gray in colour, with a ‘mane’ of dark hair from its nape along the dorsum of its neck. The Kha-nyou lives in the limestone karst landscapes of central Lao and Vietnam, is nocturnal and forages over rock and ground, but apparently does not climb vegetation, and rests, and presumably ‘nests’, in holes and crevices within the limestone. Captive animals are generally docile and placid.
To state my challenge to the History Channel’s piece head-on, the Kha-nyou is not a ‘rat’, and doesn’t have anything in common with the ‘rat family’ other than being, like a squirrel, porcupine, or chinchilla, a member of the Order Rodentia. I was horrified to have this name attributed to me.
You can’t really appreciate the ‘enigma’ in this species’ scientific name, Laonastes aenigmamus, without taking a deep dive into the taxonomic lineage. With an ancestral position within the Order Rodentia, the Kha-nyou’s closest living relatives are thought to be the African gundis of the Family Ctenodactylidae, which together are ancestral ‘basal’ members of the Suborder Hystricomorpha. This Suborder includes the likes of porcupines, chinchillas, and capybaras amongst others. Importantly, the rats, mice, and squirrels are in completely different suborders. The Kha-nyou is now recognised as likely the sole living representative of the Family Diatomyidae, otherwise only known from fossils from Eastern Europe, South, Southeast, and East Asia, spanning the last c. 11–33 million years. The Kha-nyou is remarkably similar to the fossil species Diatomys shantungensis, known from the mid Miocene (ca. 11 million years ago) of China, and the two are likely to be very closely related; however, they are still considered different species in different genera. The ca. 11 million-year gap in the fossil record from the Miocene to the present, along with the discovery of fossils prior to a living animal, has earned the Kha-nyou the designation of a Lazarus taxon. Intriguingly, genetic studies suggest Kha-nyous might actually represent several different morphologically near-identical species, some of which potentially diverged on their separate evolutionary paths millions of years ago!
The Kha-nyou shares a remarkable trait with a number of other endemic and near-endemic species of the Annamite Mountains Bioregion, as a living, little changed for more than 10 million years, descendant of the presumed former Annamites Miocene fauna. Evolution, contrary to common belief, has no direction or goal; rather, it is a mechanism for organisms to, hopefully, self-perpetuate and remain extant. Like other species in the Annamites Bioregion, e.g. the Annamite Striped Rabbit, Saola, and Owston’s Civet, the Kha-nyou likely has not changed much over the last 10+ million years, most likely because of environmental stability in the Annamite Bioregion over the same time period. As the saying goes, ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ – in other words, why would change happen if there is no pressure to adapt?
Of course, humans have likely known of the existence of Kha-nyous for 70,000 years or more, and before that our human ancestors may have known them for a million years. Limited evidence suggests that, from a population perspective and relatively speaking, the Kha-nyou is not facing a high risk of extinction, and for this reason is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List. This prognosis is largely a consequence of the habitat they call home, jagged rocky limestone karst landscapes that do not have many alternative uses from a human perspective and are also difficult for human hunters to penetrate. Kha-nyou habitat is relatively impervious to drastic large-scale change; small areas are utilised for cement production and other forms of mining, but these represent a very small proportion of the total. Nevertheless, Kha-nyous have likely been exploited as a food source for a very long time, and that continues to this day. Kha-nyous are typically caught using traditional wooden and / or bamboo traps. As a relatively small nocturnal animal with no known value beyond its meat value, still large areas of limestone karst remaining, and no clear evidence of strongly declining populations, it is hopefully a species we do not need to worry too much about in the near term (but of course we’ll be keeping an eye on them).
In summary, History Channel, we commend you for bringing much needed attention to this overlooked region, a living museum of the former Miocene and earlier biodiversity, and in need of urgent action to prevent further unrecoverable loss of biodiversity. We respectfully challenge the use of the name ‘Laotian Rock Rat’ and advocate instead for the local name, ‘Kha-nyou’, which has served this enigmatic creature perfectly for perhaps thousands of years. And, if I and the Saola Foundation have anything to do with it, this name will do just fine for many, many more years to come.
A drawing of a Kha-nyou by Rob Timmins
Application form for the Lao Youth on Mission for Nature Conservation, 3rd Cohort, 2026 Must be Lao-based
The Saola Foundation is pleased to endorse Econox and Association Anoulak in their efforts to build conservation capacity in Lao, a goal that the Saola Foundation shares. Strengthening national conservation capacity is one of our four foundational long-term strategic goals. Econox and Association Anoulak are currently recruiting for the position outlined below.
Are you passionate about nature, wildlife, biodiversity, and protecting the environment? Do you dream of building a career in conservation and making a real impact in Lao?
Join Lao Youth on a Mission for Nature Conservation (LYoM) 2026 – Batch 03, a unique opportunity for young people across Lao to gain practical knowledge, connect with conservation experts, and explore career pathways in the conservation sector.
What you will gain: Conservation and environmental training Networking with experts and like-minded youth Hands-on learning experiences Opportunity to be selected for an internship placement with partner organizations (2 weeks to 3 months)
Who can apply? Lao nationals from any province Aged 18 – 35 years old Passionate about nature conservation Committed to attending the full training program Apply here: https://forms.gle/RK4uUHHsvX6sFeNi8
Application Deadline: 30 June 2026 Interviews: First week of July 2026 Results Announcement: 2 – 3 days after interviews Training Program: 3 – 9 August 2026 Internship Opportunities: August – December 2026
The future of conservation in Lao needs passionate young leaders. Apply now and take your first step toward becoming a conservation leader!
Warm regards,
The Saola Foundation Team
Don’t forget to follow us on social media, share our message, and spread awareness about the incredible Saola and Annamite Mountains Bioregions. Your voice matters.
