Saolas are the cattle-like, grazing mammals with long tapered horns that inspired William DeBuys to write about them in The Last Unicorn. The elusive saolas live in a remote, forested area on the Laos-Vietnam border, where a Hmong team captured one for the private collection of a tribal leader in 1996. Bill Robichaud braved malaria, dengue fever, typhus, and leeches to study the captured saola that lived only 18 days.
Robichaud's experience shows how the protection of wildlife can become an international career for curious young people who grow up hiking, camping, fishing, wondering about different cultures, and testing their survival skills in freezing weather and steamy heat. The following examples of where Robichaud has worked during his career provide a glimpse of job opportunities in the international wildlife field:
- International Crane Foundation
- Nakai-Nam Theun National Protected Area of Laos
- Bronx Zoo Wildlife Conservation Society
- Global Wildlife Conservation
- Saola Working Group
- International Union for the Conservation of Nature
A day's work for those in international wildlife conservation often entails convincing villagers to protect forest resources by removing the traps used for illegal wildlife poaching. Since Laos knew the United Nations considered the country among the world's least developed, it was a source of pride to discover the forests of their Annamese mountain range housed rare saolas. Laotians also learned their forests and rivers produced commercial bamboo shoots, mushrooms, and fish not only exotic "bush meat" urban consumers consider a status symbol and monkey, rhino, box turtle, and other animal parts Vietnamese wildlife traders collect for traditional Chinese medicine.
Like areas being set aside for the preservation of elephants and tigers, the Saola Working Group hopes to capture all living saolas and breed them in a center in Vietnam. Under the leadership of Poland's Wroclaw Zoo, a consortium of zookeepers is studying methods to keep captured soalas alive in captivity. In 15 to 20 years, these saolas would be released into protected forests in Laos and Vietnam. No saolas ever will be headed to zoos.
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