The saola, Vu Quang ox or Asian unicorn, also, infrequently, Vu Quang bovid (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis), one of the world's rarest mammals, is a forest-dwelling bovine found only in the Annamite Range of Vietnam and Laos. The species was defined following a discovery of remains in 1992 in Vu Quang Nature Reserve by a joint survey of the Ministry of Forestry and the World Wide Fund for Nature. The team found three skulls with unusual long straight horns kept in hunters' houses. In their article, the team proposed "a three month survey to observe the living animal" but, more than 20 years later, there is still no reported sighting of a saola in the wild by a scientist.
In late August 2010, a saola was captured by villagers in Laos but died in captivity before government conservationists could arrange for it to be released back into the wild. The carcass is being studied with the hope that it will advance scientific understanding of the saola. Sometimes these animals get caught in snares that have been set to catch animals such as wild boar, sambar and muntjac deer that come to feed on the crops that the farmers have planted. This has become a problem especially with the illegal fur trade for medicines, restaurants and food markets. There have been a more than 26,651 snares that have been removed from habitats that the Saola has lived in for years.
The Saola Working Group was formed by the IUCN Species Survival Commission's Asian Wild Cattle Specialist Group, in 2006 to protect the saolas (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis) and their habitat. The Saola Working Group is a coalition that 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 Wildlife Fund.
