Nakai-Nam Theun

Nakai-Nam Theun National Protected Area was established in 1993 in central Laos, in the Annamite range and next to the Vietnamese border, and protects some 4,270 km². In 2019 it was raised to national park status.

It is one of the least explored areas of forest in South-East Asia, and some of the most remarkable zoological discoveries of the twentieth century have come from it. In 1992, in this region and in the adjoining Vietnamese mountains, the saola was described, a bovid with long straight horns that belonged to no known genus: it was the first large mammal described anywhere in the world in more than fifty years. Shortly afterwards the giant muntjac and other new species were described here.

The saola remains practically a ghost: it has never been kept alive in captivity for more than a few days and the last camera-trap photographs date from more than a decade ago, so it is not known whether it survives. The protected area is tied to the Nam Theun 2 hydroelectric project, whose reservoir flooded the Nakai plateau and which undertook to fund the area's conservation as a compensatory measure, an arrangement that has been debated as to its real effectiveness against snaring, the main threat to the region's wildlife.