Vu Quang National Park

In May 1992, in a remote forest region of Hà Tĩnh Province, a British zoologist named John MacKinnon was on a survey in a nature reserve, working with Vietnamese colleagues. One day he stepped into a local hunter's house. A pair of strange horns hung from a post. They were long, straight and sharp, unlike any animal he had known in his whole career studying wildlife.

That day was May 21, 1992.

After careful study, the scientists confirmed it. This was a species completely new to science. They named it the saola and announced it in the journal Nature in June 1993. It was the first large hoofed mammal found anywhere in the world in more than 50 years. Scientists around the world called it one of the most spectacular zoological discoveries of the 20th century.

And it happened right here, in Vũ Quang National Park in Hà Tĩnh.

Behind the park gate lie more than 55,000 hectares of tropical forest. The forest spreads over three areas. Vũ Quang and Hương Khê are two of them. Hương Sơn is the third. To the west it touches the border with Laos. Since 2019 the park has been an ASEAN Heritage Park, one of the most important nature conservation titles in the region.

Now, more about the saola. It is listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List. The remaining population is estimated at only a few dozen to a few hundred animals. The last time a camera trap confirmed a saola was in 2013. None live in captivity. And no scientist has ever seen a saola directly in the wild. The animal is so secretive that people know it exists from bones and from camera photographs, but scientists have never truly seen it alive.

That is why people call the saola one of the most mysterious animals on the planet.

Also in Vũ Quang, in 1994, the same research team found another species, a very large deer called the mang lớn. Two major discoveries in two years running, from one forest.

The forest here is not all of one kind. It changes with height. Below 800 meters it is lowland tropical forest with five clear layers of plants, and the canopy can rise to 50 meters. Above 1,000 meters the forest turns to mountain forest, with mist all year and trees of the laurel family. The most remarkable spot lies at about 1,445 meters. There stands a grove of ancient pơ mu trees, 800 to 1,000 years old. The pơ mu is a precious timber tree of the cypress family, once logged almost to extinction. The trees that remain here are strictly protected.

The forest also keeps traces of history. More than 130 years ago, in these very mountains, the patriot Phan Đình Phùng built a base against the French that lasted ten years. The Citadel of Elder Phan, a natural wall of stone, runs for more than 8,000 meters, and its traces remain in Quang Thọ Commune.

Vũ Quang is not only forest. From the botanical garden in the lowlands, a visitor can take a boat on Ngàn Trươi Lake. Its water spreads over more than 4,000 hectares, with more than 32 green islands rising like torn scraps of a map. Higher up, the Thang Đày Waterfall drops from a height of more than 40 meters into the old forest, and the ancient pơ mu woods, a thousand years old, fade into the mist. For those with the strength, Rào Cỏ Peak waits in the distance, 2,235 meters high, right at the border with Laos. From there one can look down over an endless stretch of forest.

This is a place where the world once stood amazed. An animal nobody knew hid completely in the canopy of this forest and showed itself only through a pair of horns hanging in a hunter's house. Somewhere in the deep green layers of that forest, the saola may still be alive. Silent. Mysterious. As it has always been.