Langur conservation in Guangxi

September 25, 2008 at 02:03 PM

Interesting article about a Chinese biologist's efforts in a village in Guangxi that helped save the area's monkeys: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/science/23monk.html?pagewanted=1

I think Dr. Pan's efforts illustrated that working from the bottom up can be more effective than working from the top down. Clearly there was a linkage here between economics and the environment. By addressing the poverty issue first, he was able to build a network of support in the local community that was crucial in protecting its biodiversity and its monkey population.

The villagers needed firewood from the forests to cook their food. Dr. Pan addressed this energy need by installing devices in the village to capture methane gas from animal waste. By helping them first, they in return helped him.

...At the Nongguan Nature Reserve in Chongzuo, Guangxi province, the real-life descendants of these mythical children — monkeys known as white-headed langurs — still swing through the forest canopy.
As the langurs traverse a towering karst peak in a setting out of a Chinese landscape painting, they appear untouched by time and change, but it is remarkable that they and their tropical forest home have survived. In 1996, when the langurs were highly endangered, Pan Wenshi, China’s premier panda biologist, came to study them in Chongzuo at what was then an abandoned military base. This was at a time when hunters were taking the canary-yellow young langurs from their cliff-face strongholds, and villagers were leveling the forest for firewood.

Dr. Pan quickly hired wardens to protect the remaining animals but then went a step further, taking on the larger social and economic factors jeopardizing the species

At that time, the langur’s population was in freefall, dropping from an estimated 2,000 individuals in the late 1980s to fewer than 500 a decade later.

“In the 1990s, the Chinese economy started booming, and those with money — governors, factory owners, businessmen — all wanted to eat the wildlife to show how powerful they were,” said Dr. Pan, 71.

A breakthrough in protecting the species came in 1997 when he helped local villagers build a pipeline to secure clean drinking water. Shortly thereafter, a farmer from the village freed a trapped langur and brought it to Dr. Pan. As self-appointed local advocate, Dr. Pan raised money for a new school in another village, oversaw the construction of health clinics in two neighboring towns and organized physicals for women throughout the area.

But the villagers were still dependent on the reserve’s trees for fuel. “If I told them they can’t cut down the trees, that wouldn’t be right,” Dr. Pan said. “They have to feed their families.”

In 2000, he received a $12,500 environmental award from Ford Motor Company. He used the money to build biogas digesters — concrete-lined pits that capture methane gas from animal waste — to provide cooking fuel for roughly 1,000 people. Based on the project’s success, the federal government financed a sevenfold increase in construction of tanks to hold biogas. Today, 95 percent of the population living just outside the reserve burn biogas in their homes.

As a result, the park’s number and diversity of trees — the langurs’ primary habitat and sole food source — has increased significantly. “When I first came, the hillsides were very rocky,” Dr. Pan said. “Now it’s hard to see the rocks and even harder to see the langurs because of all the trees.”

This is the most important thing we can do,” Dr. Pan said. “If the villagers can’t feed themselves, the langurs don’t stand a chance.”

Didn't know that male monkeys who takeover a family have the tendency to kill the cubs of the previous father. Male lions who takeover another pride kill the cubs of the previous father to encourage the female to ovulate quicker.