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Three decades ago, the Yunnan snub-nosed monkey was on the verge of extinction. Zhong Tai and his colleagues brought them back.
Baby monkeys with gray and white fur jumped from branch to branch and occasionally cried out like human babies. An adult gray black monkey squatted under a tree, leisurely munching on the weeds beside it. It was just another day at Xiangguqing Yunnan Black and White Snub-nosed Monkey National Park.
The national park sits in the Baima Snow Mountain Nature Reserve in southwestern China’s Yunnan Province. Zhong Tai recently retired from his post as deputy director of the Bureau for Management and Protection of the reserve. He spent most of his life guarding Yunnan snub-nosed monkeys with his colleagues.
According to the Report of Dynamic Monitoring of Yunnan Black and White Snub-nosed Monkey released in April 2021, the current population of Yunnan snub-nosed monkeys has exceeded 3,300 in 23 groups. But more than 30 years ago, the animal was severely endangered. Zhong Tai and his colleagues took the initiative to bring them back from the brink of extinction.
In 1983, when the Baima Snow Mountain Nature Reserve was first established, Zhong, at age 16, joined the reserve to work at a conservation station. In 1985, he was dispatched into the mountains to find the snub-nosed monkeys.
The Yunnan snub-nosed monkey lives in dense forests on mountains far from human activity. And the scarce population makes it more difficult to spot them. After months of searching, Zhong “only saw a monkey’s butt.”
In June 1985, Zhong Tai met a local herder who used to be a hunter and learnt from him the tricks of searching for monkeys. “These monkeys make a lot of noises. You must walk quietly and listen with all four limbs on the ground. You must also hide yourself behind the protruding stone when you follow them.”
The next morning, Zhong Tai set out quietly to “hunt” for monkeys according to the instructions of the herder. He camped in a tent next to a river that night. Wolves started howling at midnight. “It sounded very close,” he recalled. “It seemed right near the tent. I was so scared that I couldn’t sleep all night, and my hair even stood on end.” After dawn, Zhong ran back home.
Upon hearing what happened, the herder laughed. “Come on, lad, wolves could be your guide,” he said. “They were also looking for monkeys. Don’t be afraid. Wolves never attack people around here. Go back there tonight.” So Zhong Tai went back in search of the monkeys with more courage. After unremitting tracking and observation, he finally saw how wolves hunted monkeys.
Finding monkeys in the wild is a far less rewarding job. Monkeys react faster than humans. When a human is tracking monkeys, the vigilant creature can often hear human steps first and escape quickly. Zhong and his colleagues often spent months without finding one.
“We not only protected their lives and populations, but also kept them wild,” said Zhong.
“Xiangguqing covers only 20 square kilometers,” he said. “The range of activities of one group of monkeys is about 10 square kilometers. So the park can accommodate at most 60 monkeys. Therefore, we have to cultivate small populations and send them into nature annually.”
Early on, Zhong and his colleagues were surprised by a tendency of the monkey population in Xiangguqing: The gender ratio of female and male monkeys at birth is a staggering 1:4, making the population heavily male. Xiangguqing has a sound environment for them without harassment from natural enemies or bother from humans. Why do the monkeys have such a sex ratio at birth?
More observation revealed that groups of Yunnan snub-nosed monkeys scatter very far apart.
So, staffers of the national park started choosing the most vigorous male monkeys in the base and putting them in the wild every one or two years, leaving some old and weak ones to receive care in the base.
Zhong Tai also participated in the preparation of the document. He considers it a memorandum to record every procedure and step needed to protect the Yunnan snub-nosed monkey. The paper also cited the more accurate number of the monkeys. “I’m retired now,” he said. “Years of protection efforts produced this document, which can serve as reference, so the next generation knows what to do.”
(The content is provided by Beijing-based China-India Dialogue.)
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