The saola, discovered by science only in 1992, may already be functionally extinct. This rare bovid from the Annamite Mountains faces threats from snaring, habitat loss, and hunting that may have already pushed it past recovery.
The saola's welfare situation is inseparable from its existential crisis. Snare injuries cause severe suffering — snares cut into limbs, cause slow strangulation, and leave animals struggling for hours or days before death or rescue. The stress of capture has proven uniformly fatal in the few cases where saola were held — their extreme sensitivity to captivity suggests a profound stress response to confinement. The acute welfare suffering of snaring is happening to an animal so rare that each individual represents an extraordinary fraction of the entire species. The Saola Working Group's efforts to map and remove snares in Annamite forest areas represent one of the few interventions that could simultaneously reduce individual suffering and prevent extinction.