The Sumatran muntjac deer species had been “lost” in the remote mountains of western Sumatra’s Kerinci Seblat National Park until it was found in a hunter’s snare in September 2007, as seen in a previously released photograph.
Originally discovered in 1914, the deer had not been seen since the early 1920s—despite the 3.2-million-acre (1.3-million-hectare) park’s rapid conversion from dense forest to farmland, which is happening at a rate of one percent a year, according to FFI’s Linkie.
The park is known as the attic of Sumatra, Debbie Martyr, head of FFI’s program in Kerinici Seblat, noted by email, “because you can spend years in here looking for stuff and keep coming across all sorts of interesting things you never dreamed were there or had entirely forgotten about.”
