Rediscovered Deer

 

The animal, which lives deep

in the remote rainforests of

Sumatra, was not discovered

until 1914, and researchers

knew little about it.

A deer caught in a poacher's snare provide the first sighting of a species that had not been seen for almost eighty years.  Members of an anti-poaching patrol came across the Sumatran muntjac, which was still alive, and were able to release it.  The last known sighting of a Sumatran muntjac was in 1930, but photographs taken by the patrol still exists.  Shortly after the snared deer was freed, two others were pictured by infra-red camera traps that had been set up in another part of the Kerinci-Seblat National Park in western Sumatra.

    Debbie Martyr of Fauna & Flora International took the photographs of the snared deer, Muntiacus montanus, while on patrol in 2008 with the Kerinci-Seblat National Park Tiger Protection Team. Close inspection of the pictures by Professor Colin Groves of the Australian National University later confirmed that the animal was the Sumatran muntjac.  Taxonomists have now decided to classify the deer as a full species rather than a sub-species of the closely-related red muntjac.

     The animal, which lives deep in the remote rainforestsof Sumatra, was not discovered until 1914, and researchers know little about it. The original specimen of the deer was placed in the Raffles Meseum in singapore but was lost during the 1942 evacuation prior to the Japanese Invasion.

     Kerinci-Seblat National park covers 5,400 sq-miles (14,000 sq.km) and is regardedas one of the world's biodiversity hotspots.  Known inhabitants include 86 mammal species, 375 bird species and more than 4,000 types of plant.  Scientists are convinced thatmuch more remains to be discovered.