The Saola was only discovered to science in 1992. There are no Saola in captivity. No Saola have been seen by scientists in the wild. A few records on camera trap exist. In 2004, there were still reports of Saola deep in the Truong Son mountains. This individual was confiscated from hunters in A'Luoi district, in the western reaches of the province. The other pictures are from interviews with Ka Tu ethnic hunters in A'Luoi and A'Vuong districts (Minh Hoang). The last photo is James with rangers from Hue Forest Department examining Saola tracks in A'Luoi - and identifzing schistamoglottis plants, reportedly favoured food for the saola.

In 2013, its status is critical. See what is happening on http://www.savethesaola.org/

MBL Director requested that we try to locate specimens. I purchased the Pennak/Zinn paper describing the group which identified Nobska Beach as a known location from June/July 1939 and a source for the cotypes.

On Sep 20, Bill Grossman made a series of samples at Nobska Beach. He made a series of samples from high to low water at four locations running west to east more or less evenly spaced along the beach. At each location he took three to five samples from the high water mark down by 2-2.5 meter increments. Based on the paper's details he took a vertical shovelful of sand and sampled between 12-15 cm from the surface.

The resultant 16 or so jars were examined by MBLs Carsten Wolff. He found two specimens in the lowest (wettest) sample of the middle two sampling locations. He will look for additional specimens in the samples.