Battle to save the Chinese Monava Monkey

Until the 1980s, people wandered around the Shangggian mountains in Central China hunting monkeys for meat and fur.

Poor farmers still cleared huge areas of trees, and when their environment fell apart, as well as the local population of gold nose monkeys, dropping below 500 in the wild.

This was a situation where a new graduate Jan Jiian arrived in 1991, back in the early 20’s.

“The monkeys’ house was destroyed by cutting off to reduce their number,” he says. “Now it is protected, and the monkey figures are really improving.”

These days, Professor Jan is the director of the Shennongu National Park, and probably no one knows this species better than he.

55-year-old Professor Jan spent his entire working life, trying to understand and protect this under the endangered subspecies of the notes that exist only in these mountains in the Hay province, and he drove us to the forest to meet them.

I asked if it was true that he now understands what many of their noises mean.

“Yes,” he said. “Yeee says to others that the area is safe. They may approach. V-ka means it’s dangerous. Be careful.”

And, probably, he made different noises when the monkeys went down from the trees, holding hands, touching us and checking people.

When we sat down on the ground to put them quietly, he said that these animals had a very complex social structure.

Professional John explained how their groups were collapsing and crawling to find out what was going on, Professor Jan explained how their groups were breaking.

One man of the family group executives may have three wives as well as their children. Then families come together to create a wider band that can be over one hundred.

Bachelor’s males form their own groups that sometimes stand guard. Females have “cases” behind her husband’s backs, causing tension and struggles not only when a man takes control of the family with an existing male head, but when all the “tribe” of monkeys fights another to control the territory.

Six-year-old women know when it’s time to leave their family and join the other to prevent inbriding and animals, who live up to 24 years, also know when it’s time to die.

At the end of their lives, we were told, they find a quiet place on their own and go out alone. The Rangers said the places were so separate that for decades they had never been able to find the monkey body after it happened.

The fact that these unique animals can now exist in this way on an area of ​​400 square kilometers (155 square miles), very different from how it was.

Despite the fact that the National Park was created in 1982, one 49-year-old Ranjar, who grew up in the area, Fang Jicks said he took many years to fight farmers to stop destroying this environment.

“People were very poor in these mountains, and hunger was a real concern. There was no concept of protection of wild animals,” he said.

“Even after cutting off the hand, there were still people who illegally cut down the wood. If they did not cut down the trees, how they had money?

Part of this awareness was to bring these farmers on board to become forest defenders, not schools.

“When there were changes, scientists told us that you could come and work with us. You can work here to help animals,” Mr. Fang said.

Now it is part of the team that patrol the hills, watching the pockets and, most importantly, looking for where there are monkeys to study, how and where they sleep, increase and give birth.

Searching them can be difficult because animals can cover the area through the tops in minutes, so that a person will take an hour for a walk.

Moreover, these entertaining primates are naturally open to human interaction, especially given how dangerous such contact could be in the past.

It took great effort to turn it over.

A great impetus for preservation took place in 2005 when Professor Jan and a small group of others created a specialized training group.

In order to contact a particular group of monkeys, we sat in the forest, the team spent the whole year, approaching them.

“At first they were very afraid of us. When they saw us from afar, they all fled,” said Professor Jan.

But – month by month – distances of 800 meters became 500 meters, then 200 meters, until the animals allowed the team to be among them.

“I was so excited because they finally became my friends. Every day we could be together and communicate,” he said.

Old photos from the first days of Professor’s teams showed bare hills with trees about 60%, but when we put a drone, from the top of the mountain, we could see that trees lighting reports are about 96%.

The beauty of this place naturally brought tourists, and millions of visitors have come in recent years.

But while tourists can travel through many parts of the national park, special monkeys protection zones go beyond all but approved employees.

In one of these zones we were taken by a solid mountain.

We handed over the camera and transmitters that were created for observing not only monkeys, but also black bears, boar and many other wild species in Sennondji.

Then, from an exciting point of view, they showed a valley where farmers lived, but were now moved to other places to help protect the ecosystem.

Later, we talked to one person who said he was glad to leave this remote, poor existence. With the support of the government he received for the move, he and his family ruled the guest house and much happier.

All these efforts were the tough road for Professor Jan, which is even more difficult to do the women’s gold, the nos malp is so slowly multiplying, only one child at one time, every two years. In addition, not all their children survive.

However, the figure of 500 monkeys has become more than 1600, and they hope it will take 2000 in 10 years.

“I’m very optimistic,” said Professor Jan. “Their home is now very well protected. They have food and drinks, do not worry about the need for life, and above all, their number is growing.”