Conservationists are calling for urgent action to prevent the extinction of the world’s most endangered primate, after 26 eastern black crested gibbons were discovered last month in Vietnam.
Frank Momberg, country director for Fauna and Flora International (FFI), said the gibbon, thought to be extinct, was first spotted in the impoverished northeastern province of Cao Bang at the beginning of the year by two Vietnamese biologists.
A five-member team, including Momberg and Swiss primatologist Thomas Geissmann, one of the world’s leading experts on gibbons, travelled to the mountainous province last month to carry out a population study.
There, in the forest-clad district of Trung Khanh along the border with China, sparsely populated by ethnic minority hill tribes, they documented what is believed to be the remnants of a once abundant species — 26 gibbons in five family groups.
”Given that those left are divided between males and females, there is a chance that this population can recover. But it will literally be a case of pulling a species back from the brink of extinction,” said Momberg.
The rare gibbon, scientifically known as Nomascus nasutus nasutus, and weighing between seven and 10 kilograms, used to live in forests across northeastern Vietnam and southern China. However, it became extinct on the Chinese mainland in the 1950s.
The last reliable sightings in Vietnam, where they are locally known as cao-vit because of their distinctive morning songs used as mating calls and to mark their territory, were in the early 1960s and it was feared that they had become extinct.
A subspecies, the Hainan gibbon or Nomascus nasutus hainanus, exist on China’s Hainan island but the recorded population there has dropped to 20.
”There are 12 000 Sumatran orangutans, and around 70 000 gorillas and more than 100 000 chimpanzees in Africa, but the total known global population for the eastern black crested gibbon is 26,” Momberg said.
”It is essential that more attention and resources are focused on these highly endangered animals. They need to emerge from the shadow of the great apes.”
However, he warned that formidable obstacles lined their survival path, particularly since ”Cao Bang is one of the poorest provinces in Vietnam and conservation is not high on their priority list”.
Momberg said the primary concern was the dwindling size of their habitat, which has been reduced to just 2 500 hectares as a result of logging and deliberate mass deforestation by Chinese troops during their brief but bloody border war with Vietnam in 1979.
”Can this area support an increase in population? We don’t know at the moment but we are not optimistic.”
Dang Ngoc Can, a biologist at the Institute of Ecology and Biological Resources, said the international community had an obligation to ensure their survival.
”This is a very rare subspecies that as far as we know only exists in Vietnam. They are the property of Vietnam as well as of the world and so we have to protect them,” he said.
”But first of all, we need the government to declare this region a species habitat conservation area so we can develop a comprehensive scientific programme to protect them and their forest.”
Unlike a nature reserve in which local people are relocated, a species habitat conservation area seeks to address the needs of the area’s inhabitants while protecting the endangered animal.
Momberg added: ”Without the help and desire of the local people, we cannot prevent the gibbons from becoming extinct.” He said FFI has secured a commitment from the provincial government to submit a proposal to the central government for its establishment.
Among other initiatives needed to address the gibbon’s shaky future, conservationists say substitutes for timber, used by locals for fuel and house construction, need to be made available to prevent any further loss of habitat.
Momberg also called for more strenuous efforts by border security forces to prevent the infiltration of poachers from China hunting the rare primate for its bones, which are used in Chinese medicine to cure back pain.
His concern was echoed by Can: ”It’s fortunate that the gibbons are living in a remote area. The local people told us they have no intention to hunt them, but the danger comes from the illegal hunters crossing the Chinese border.”
Vietnam officially recognises 54 species of mammals and 60 species of birds as endangered, but its wildlife population is in a precipitous decline due to deforestation, pollution of waterways and poaching.
Their calls in the past may have been drowned out by wars and economic doldrums, but this time round the message is loud and clear from the conservation lobby: without immediate and meaningful action, the singing gibbon may be the first primate in over a millennium to become extinct. – Sapa-AFP