A tiny deer-like creature was feared extinct, but scientists just photographed it for the first time in a generation
2019-11-13 08:11:09
A small deer-like creature that conservationists feared was extinct has been photographed, in Vietnam, for the first time in almost three decades. Scientists had last spotted the silver-backed chevrotain, also called the Vietnamese mouse-deer, in 1990 in central Vietnam, Global Wildlife Conservation said in a statement. The rabbit-size chevrotain lives in a tropical forest-covered part of the Asian nation, is often targeted by poachers and is the first mammal on the Texas-based organization's list of 25 most-wanted lost species to be found. "For so long this species has seemingly only existed as part of our imagination," An Nguyen, an associate conservation scientist for Global Wildlife Conservation, said in the statement. "Discovering that it is, indeed, still out there, is the first step in ensuring we don't lose it again, and we're moving quickly now to figure out how best to protect it." Scientists talked with residents and government forest rangers in the southern Vietnamese coastal city of Nha Trang who said they had seen a gray chevrotain, which is a more-common type of chevrotain than the silver-sheened one. The locals and rangers told the scientists that the chevrotain population had been declining because of hunting. The scientists then set up three camera traps, which in five months captured 275 photos of the silver-backed chevrotain. Another 29 cameras put in place for an additional five months recorded 1,881 more pictures. "To the scientific world this was a lost species, but local people had known about it," Andrew Tilker, Asian species officer at Global Wildlife Conservation, told CNN. "It was only by utilizing the local ecological knowledge that we were successful. That can be replicated for other species in other parts of the world." The conservationists published their findings on Monday in the...
