An expedition team revealed that footprints and droppings from the Visayan spotted deer, one of the world's most elusive mammals, have been found deep in the Philippines jungle, BBC News reported.Considered one of the most vulnerable of all mammals, less than 300 of the deer are thought to remain on just two islands.
The discovery, made by Craig Turner and James Sawyer, came about as the team explored the inner forests of the North Negros Natural Park (NNNP) on Negros Island in the Philippines, one of the most vulnerable forest ecosystems in the world, with only 16,500h of forest remaining in a park of more than 80,000h.
Turner, an environmental consultant who for years helped organize conservation work on the fringes of one of the least explored of all tropical forests, said the team held an ambition to access the interior and undertake the first biological exploration of the forest.
Turner, Sawyer and colleagues in the Philippines explored the area for five years before founding the Negros Interior Biodiversity Expedition.
The team entered the interior in April and while surveying for new species they kept a particular eye out for the Visayan spotted deer (Rusa alfredi), also known as the Philippine spotted deer.
The Visayan holds the distinction of possibly being the rarest deer in the world and is one of three deer species native to the country.
They soon stumbled across several sets of tracks along the edge of a river after three days of exploration.
They discovered evidence of where the deer had been feeding on young palm trees, and experts say the findings suggest that more than one group of Visayan spotted deer survive in the park, given the distance between the two discoveries.
They also found two piles of deer scat in a natural clearing, at a site where they hoped to trap bats. Sets of deer footprints lead away from the small droppings.
Since the Visayan spotted deer is the only deer species living on the Negros island, the team is confident they found signs of life of the elusive mammal, as experts say there are few other large mammals on the island that could have left such signs.
Turner said other species such as the Visayan warty pig and civets have distinctly different scat.
The Visayan spotted deer was found to have become extinct in over 95 percent of its former range when the last major survey was conducted in 1991.
It now only survives on two of the seven Visayan islands of the central Philippines, Negros and Panay.
The two populations have been separated for thousands of years, with no confirmed sighting of the deer on Negros since the mid-1990s.
Turner said it has been assumed that the species persists in the NNNP, but no scientific proof has been presented in recent years, and very little fieldwork has been completed on the deer.
"This discovery confirms they are surviving, but doesn't tell us they are thriving," he added.
Image Courtesy Wikipedia
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