Endangered China monkeys double in number

UPI 6 Sep 08;

GUIYANG, China, Sept. 6 (UPI) -- The number of endangered gray snub-nosed monkeys, found only in China's Guizhou province, has more than doubled to about 850, a government bureau says.

The population, which lives in Guizhou's 260-square-mile mountainous Fanjingshan National Nature Reserve, has grown because of steady environmental improvements and governmental protection measures, the Fanjingshan National Nature Reserve Administration Bureau said.

Back in 1979, there were just 400 gray snub-nosed simians, the bureau noted in a report carried by Xinua, China's official news agency.

The reserve, seeking to end more than a century of mining that depleted the forest on the mountains' northern slope, was established in 1978.

The monkey, on China's list of most-endangered wild animals, is the rarest among the three species of golden monkeys in China.

Since 1992, the bureau has successfully bred 16 of the monkeys, also known as Guizhou golden hair monkeys or gray golden hair monkeys, from seven captured in the wild, Xinhua reported.

The monkeys get their name from the short, stump of a nose on their round face, with nostrils arranged forward.

Primarily tree-dwellers, they inhabit mountain forests up to an altitude of two to three miles, in the winter moving into the deeply secluded regions.

Rare monkeys double in number in China but remain under threat
mongabay.com 8 Sep 08;

China's population of the gray snub-nosed monkey, a critically-endangered species endemic to Guizhou Province in southwestern China, has more than doubled in the wild since conservation measures were implemented in 1979, reports Chinese state media.

The primate is the among country's most endangered species — even rarer than the better-known panda — with a population of around 850 according to the Fanjingshan National Nature Reserve Administration Bureau, which manages the 260-square-mile (670-square-kilometer) reserve where the bulk of individuals are found. The population has increased from about 400 in 1979. The species, which is also known as Guizhou golden hair monkey, was under threat from poaching and habitat loss caused by mining and logging. Efforts to breed the monkey in captivity have met little success — only 16 have been bred since 1992.

The species — like two closely related species of golden monkey in China — inhabits high-altitude evergreen forests at elevations from 3,000 to 4,500 meters (9,800 to 14,800 feet), where temperatures may fall below freezing for several months in a row.