Missing Monkey Month Already…
Want to revisit those glorious primates? Click on Archives, left-hand column.
Last Monk of Monkey Month, but not Least…
Monkey Month may be over, but we won’t forget our fellow primates. Look for more endangered simians coming up throughout the year.
Top This, Snooki
Many monkeys sport outstanding hair, from the Kipunji (see Endangered All-Star 188) to Snooki. But the Cotton Top is in a class by itself. Now, if only we could make them as ubiquitous as the Big Hair primates on the Jersey Shore.
Golden Boy
Monkey Month moves to the New World with a look at the glorious Golden Lion Tamarin, today’s Endangered All-Star. Well-known and much-publicized efforts have focused on the captive breeding and reintroduction of the species, but equally important are efforts to save its wild home, the Atlantic forests of Brazil. You can Adopt-an-Acre from the Nature Conservancy and help speed their campaign to plant a billion trees in this denuded area. Go on—you know you want to.
Photo: © Dave Watts
MOST ENDANGERED PRIMATES IN THE WORLD
The Eastern Black Crested Gibbon, along with its closely related relative, the Hainan Gibbon, is right on the verge. Fortunately, Fauna & Flora International, which rediscovered the species in 2002, is supporting community patrols to guard the remaining individuals, while bringing biogas facilities and improved stoves to villages to help curtail wood cutting. Watch a video of this rare species at the link above.
The Bad News: Fewer than 250 survive.
The Good News: Local communities in Vietnam are now beginning to value their unique endemic primates and are working with Fauna & Flora International to set aside protected areas for this and other species.
Photo: See images by Geoff Robinson Photography at greenpacks.org, where there are also some lovely videos of the Tonkin Snub-Nosed Monkey.
200
It’s the 19th primate posting of Monkey Month and iWild’s 200th daily Endangered All-Star of 2010. Not a cause for celebration, alas, but a small milestone to mark what we’ve lost forever, to honor the fantastic living creatures (including many of our fellow-primates) who could disappear, and to renew our devotion to wildlife conservation and rewilding our wounded planet. In this spirit, check out Mongabay.com’s inspiring story about the first photograph ever of Sri Lanka’s Horton Plains Slender Loris, thought to be extinct by researchers for six decades. It’s another sign of how little we really know about our rarest biological treasures, of how much we still have to learn, and of how high the stakes are for preserving and protecting habitat and biodiversity.
