Conservationists announced Friday that the population of the Bubalus mindorensis, one of the world's rarest creatures, in the Philippines has grown to its largest since efforts to save them from being wiped out from the face of the earth began.

A total of 382 tamaraws, a more common name for the dwarf buffalo, were counted in the year's annual survey in a protected mountain region, an increase from 2013's number of 245, according to data from the World Wildlife Fund.

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Famed for its distinct V-shaped horns, the tamaraw can only be seen in the mountains  of Mindoro, a farming island located in the center of the Philippines.

With a chocolate brown coat, the stocky tamaraw lives in the forests of the area. It only weighs half as much as the more frequent carabao, which is generally used by Philippine farmers to pull ploughs for their rice paddies.

"The tamaraw is the flagship species of the Philippines. It is our moral obligation and international commitment to preserve them," forest ranger Rodel Boyles, who heads a joint private sector  and  government conservation effort.

He added that if the tamaraws are not to be protected, the entire species might become extinct in just five years.

Just two steps away from being classified extinct, the tamaraw is considered to be "critically endangered" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Destruction of the tamaraw's habitat to make way for grazing areas of more common cattle, and hunting, led to their near-extinction, as the number of tamaraws in the wild dropped from 10,000 in the 1900s to just 154 a hundred years later, according to the WWF.

The private sector and government's Tamaraw Conservation Programme aims to make the dwarf buffalo's population double from current 300 to 600 by the year 2020, Gregg Yan, a local spokesman for the WWF, said.

TagsBubalus mindorensis, Conservation, extinction, World Wildlife Fund, International Union for Conservation of Nature, Mindoro, Carabao