Recent research has confirmed the first sighting of a dhole in more than two decades, a reddish-brown wild dog native to Asia. Before the sighting, the predator was believed to be extinct in Vietnam. The dhole (Cuon alpinus), historically one of the most widespread large carnivores in Asia, was seen on camera-trap footage. The single adult was spotted in Pu Hoat Nature Reserve in Nghe An province on New Year’s Eve in 2023. Before this sighting, the IUCN Red List considered the dhole locally extinct. The find was so unexpected that researchers initially doubted their own eyes. “To be quite honest, before and during the field survey, we did not expect any amazing results,” study author Tuan Anh Nguyen from Vietnam National University told Mongabay. “I really thought I might have a case of a domestic dog… that coincidentally looked somewhat like a dhole.” The image was eventually verified by four independent biologists. This documentation followed 49 large-scale surveys and more than 260,000 camera-trap recordings across 31 sites, during which no other dholes were detected. Despite the sighting, researchers cude theoncl species is likely extirpated across most of Vietnam’s protected areas, primarily due to commercial snaring, a form of industrial hunting that uses wire snares, with up to 10,000 traps. Such traps create a lethal gauntlet for any ground-dwelling species, Nguyen said. “A wide-ranging carnivore species like a dhole is the most sensitive to snaring, as they themselves are vulnerable to snaring, and their food base is also vulnerable to snaring,”…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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