Chevrotain Footage Marks First Mammal Rediscovery For 25 Most Wanted Lost Species List

In the midst of what ’s being called the sixth great mass extinction, we often hear reports of animals being on the brink of extinction or even completely going extinct right in front of our eyes. It is a daunting reality that humanity is facing, and one conservationist is working hard to fight.

Now, however, the Global Wildlife Conservation (GWC) and its partners are reporting optimistic news in the rediscovery of a deer-like species that was thought to be lost to science for the last 30 years.

Silver-Backed Chevrotain

The silver-backed chevrotain, also called Vietnamese mouse-deer, is a fanged deer-like species that is considered the world’s smallest hoofed mammal with its average weight of fewer than 10 pounds. The mysterious creatures known only from Vietnam are roughly the size of rabbits and, despite being called mouse-deer, are neither mouse nor deer.

The species was widely hunted from 1978 to the mid-1990s, and the area they lived in experienced severe deforestation. As a result, their populations continued to decline until the early 1990s when they were finally considered lost to science and no confirmed records of the species were made in the next 25 years.

Species Rediscovery

That is, until late 2017 when researchers set-up camera traps in the coastal forested area in the vicinity of Nha Trang following local reports of gray chevrotain sightings. Amazingly, all three cameras they set-up recorded images of silver-backed chevrotains, capturing 275 images of the species in that initial survey alone and 1,881 more in a second, more intensive survey with 29 cameras.

“In an age of mass extinctions, confirming the survival of lost species provides rare second chances for biodiversity conservation,” researchers said in their paper published in Nature Ecology & Evolution where they provided the evidence for the silver-backed chevrotain,s existence.

25 Most Wanted Lost Species List

With this discovery, the GWC has ticked off the first mammal in their list of the 25 Most Wanted Lost Species. The other creatures already rediscovered in the list are Jackson’s climbing salamander in Guatemala, Wallace’s giant bee, and the velvet pitcher plant in Indonesia. The GWC is, currently, awaiting genetic test results to confirm the possible rediscovery of Fernandina Galapagos tortoise, and the Pondicherry shark in India.

Other mammals in the list include the Omiltemi cottontail rabbit, Namdapha flying squirrel, and the Ilin island cloud runner. These, along with a majority of the other creatures on the list, have yet to be rediscovered.