March 11, 2023
Dear Friends of Saola,

Wildlife tracking, the art of identifying animal tracks and signs and following their trails to find them, has been called the oldest science. Cultures throughout history have practiced wildlife tracking for food and safety. Only the best trackers came home consistently and safely with food for their people – evidence of their skill. Only those who spent regular time practicing became skilled trackers.

Since the early 1990s CyberTracker Conservation has been the international gold-standard for certifying the skill of wildlife trackers. Beginning in 2020, CyberTracker began collaborating with the Saola Foundation, and is now one of our key technical partners in the Saola search.

Please join us on Saturday, March 25, for the next in our live online seminars, this time with Lee Gutteridge and Dr. Kersey Lawrence of CyberTracker Conservation, to learn how this ‘oldest ‘science’ will help us find and save Saola. Their talk is free, but registration is required, which you can do here.  Local times for their talk are listed below.

Last November Lee traveled to Laos and the Annamites to begin the search and to help identify already skilled local trackers, and to start training additional trackers for the Saola Foundation’s field team. Lee and Kersey will discuss tracking applications and the history of CyberTracker, and Lee will describe the extreme beauty and the even more extreme challenges around recovering an animal that truly is “The Last Unicorn.” This Saola work aligns with the spirit of CyberTracker Conservation’s co-founder, Louis Liebenberg, and his goals to find, certify, and empower local trackers, and to help to develop a worldwide environmental monitoring network.


Lee and Lao tracker candidates with a plaster cast made from a possible Saola track they found in the Annamite Mountains (November 2022).

Lee Gutteridge is the author of nine natural history publications. One of the highest qualified nature guides in the world, Lee owns a guide training school, Nature Guide Training, in South Africa, where he has been guiding, tracking, and training guides and trackers for more than thirty years.

Dr. Kersey Lawrence received her PhD in Natural Resources & the Environment from the University of Connecticut in 2020.  For her dissertation, she studied trackers, tracking, and the CyberTracker system for certifying trackers across the world. She owns an international education-abroad company, Original Wisdom, which enriches students of all ages by introducing them to nature, science, and field skills through “the ecology of tracking and the culture of trackers.”

Both Lee and Kersey are Senior Trackers in the CyberTracker system, the highest certification, and evaluate trackers on the same system. They travel the world to track animals, and to train and certify trackers. When not working or traveling, they share a home in South Africa’s Kruger National Park.

Hope to see you on the 25th for their fascinating talk!

-The Saola Foundation Team

Local times, Saturday, March 25:
08:00 am US Pacific DST
09:00 am US Mountain DST
10:00 am US Central DST
11:00 am US Eastern DST
15:00 London
16:00 most of continental Europe
17:00 Cape Town
22:00 Vientiane/Hanoi/Bangkok