How Many Saola Are Left?

Almost certainly fewer than 100 Saola remain in the wild, and none are held in captivity. The species has never been observed in the wild by a researcher, and has not been recorded by a camera trap since 2013.

The Saola is among the world’s most endangered large mammals. Its numbers cannot be counted directly because the animal has never been studied in the wild.

When was a Saola last seen?

2013, by a camera trap.

Since the species was described to science in 1992, there have been no observations of Saola in the wild by researchers, and only five records captured by remote camera traps. The last of those was in 2013.

The Saola was first discovered in 1992, when skull frontlets carrying the species’ distinctive horns were found in village houses in Viet Nam.

Is the Saola extinct?

No. At the Saola Foundation we believe it is not too late to save the Saola.

A vast forest area for Saola to hide within still exists. Other easily detected but equally threatened species, including Gaur and two species of bear, are still certainly present in very small numbers in the Annamite Mountains. Indirect reports continue to reach the IUCN Saola Working Group from its network, indicating the species does still exist in ever dwindling numbers.

Our field teams have been searching intensively since 2022. In the first half of 2026 alone they collected and tested 669 potential Saola dung samples. None returned Saola DNA.

What is the Saola’s conservation status?

Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

The Saola is endemic to the Annamite Mountains of Lao and Viet Nam and occurs nowhere else on earth. It is a tropical forest bovid and an ancestral member of the cattle clade, in a genus of its own, with no close living relative.

Why the Saola is disappearing

The rapid and precipitous decline of the Saola was brought about primarily by uncontrolled hunting, above all by indiscriminate wire snaring. Snares are set for other wildlife such as wild pigs and muntjac, and Saola become accidental victims of them.

That threat has now almost certainly been superseded by a second one. Population densities have fallen so low that natural social interaction between Saola is close to impossible, so breeding and recruitment have likely largely ceased. Even if hunting and every other threat were removed tomorrow, the Saola would still go extinct without direct intervention.

What is being done

To save the Saola, we first have to find it.

Approximately 15,000 square kilometers of potentially occupied habitat remains. Searching all of it is not possible, so the effort is concentrated: an intensive, systematic search of a 300 square kilometer target area in Bolikhamxay Province, Lao, covered one square kilometer at a time from a mobile forest basecamp. The Saola Foundation runs the only program in the world dedicated solely to finding and saving this species.

The work uses an indigenous animal tracking unit, the first scent detection dog unit in mainland Southeast Asia dedicated to biodiversity conservation, and a portable DNA testing platform that can identify Saola DNA from dung at basecamp within hours.

The search for the last Saola is funded entirely by people who care whether this animal survives. You can support it here.