Saola Tracks #14: Happy World Saola Day! And Some Exciting Announcements
Dear Friends of Saola,
July 9 marks World Saola Day! On this occasion, we send our best wishes, and sincere thanks for all your support. We have some good news to share to mark the day, and we also ask your help.
We’ve made outstanding progress in the less than two years since we launched the Saola Foundation. We’re now close to finishing the assembly of an elite Saola detection team. This will be unlike any wildlife search team ever fielded in Southeast Asia – integrating sign detection dogs, rapid DNA field-testing, and expert human trackers. The team will have wide value for efforts to conserve endangered wildlife well beyond Saola.
We anticipate the team beginning field trials in Lao in the next few months. Once the team is in the field, it will be crucial, for the best chance of finding and saving Saola, that we have enough resources available to keep them in the field and well-supported, without interruption. To celebrate World Saola Day, can you help us get there? Every donation is important at this key stage of the project. Thank you!
If you’d like to consider supporting a specific component of this exciting search on a sustaining basis, such as sponsoring a detection dog, or providing salary support for one of the local wildlife trackers, please get in touch with CEO Dr. Lorraine Scotson at info@saolafoundation.org, or President Bill Robichaud at williamrobichaud@yahoo.com.
In celebration of World Saola Day, we are pleased to announce that this Saturday, July 9, we will launch the Saola Foundation’s new Facebook page (@savesaola), and new Instagram account (@saola_foundation). Log in to see our first posts, information, and fun! We are grateful to ASAP, the Asian Species Action Partnership, for their collaboration on this.
Please help spread the word about Saola by adding your own post for World Saola Day, and/or liking and sharing our content. Let’s grow the Saola conservation community. Video and text instructions for making your own Saola post can be found here.
Finally, we are delighted to introduce a new member of our team, Lulu Deng.
Lulu will help with communications and grants management. In addition to such skills, her interests include including acting, climbing, and, appropriately, zoology! She brings to the Saola Foundation a keen eye for detail and big dash of creativity. Welcome, Lulu!
Saving Saola is a remarkable, important undertaking, and we’ll get it done, working together.
Happy World Saola Day!
The Saola Foundation Team
