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Mar. 8 – The Kouprey (Bos sauveli) – a wild, forest-dwelling ox found mainly in northern Cambodia, but also believed to exist in southern Laos, western Vietnam, and eastern Thailand – is about to be declared extinct by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
The Kouprey was discovered in 1937 and is a very large ungulate, about the same size as a Wild Asian Water Buffalo. Male Kouprey stand up to two meters tall at the shoulder and weigh an average of 900 kilograms. The species live in low, partially forested hills where they eat mainly grasses. Kouprey are diurnal, eating in the open at night and under the forest cover during the day. They live in herds of up to twenty, generally consisting of only cows and calves, but also bulls during the dry season.
No Kouprey have been sighted since 1983 and, during the last decade, several searches for the animal have proven fruitless. The demise of the animal is attributed to uncontrolled hunting by locals and soldiers, in conjunction with diseases introduced from cattle and loss of habitat. There is no captive population. It would become the second Asian mammal to become extinct within the past three years, following the Chinese Yangtze River Dolphin. About one third of all Asian mammal species are expected to become extinct within the next 70 years.
