Conservation news
New hope for the Hainan gibbon: formation of a new group outside its known range
The Hainan gibbon Nomascus hainanus is endemic to China’sHainan Island and is the world’s rarest primate spe- cies. Once widespread throughout the island, a relict popu- lation of,10 individuals survived in a single forest patch in Hainan Bawangling National Nature Reserve in the 1970s (Liu et al., 1989, American Journal of Primatology, 19, 247– 254). The species was hovering on the brink of extinction, with only two family groups, until the turn of the new millennium. Since 2003, however, following conservation efforts by Kadoorie Farm & Botanic Garden and local con- servation authorities, the gibbon population has gradually recovered, with a third and fourth family group formed in 2011 and 2015, respectively. The entire population of this Critically Endangered species was restricted to a c. 16 km2 forest fragment in the Mt Futouling area of the Reserve (Chan, 2015,in Primates in Peril: The World’s 25 Most Endangered Primates 2014–2016, pp. 67–69.) At the end of 2019, the Reserve’s gibbon monitoring team
made an exciting discovery: a newly-formed pair of Hainan gibbons was detected in a forest c. 8 km north of the known gibbon range. This discovery is a milestone for the conser- vation of theHainan gibbon as it represents the largest num- ber of family groups in recent history and indicates the species’ ability to expand its range. This pair of gibbons were first reported by local villagers
in October 2019, and confirmed, with the detection of a male solo call, by our community monitoring team in early November 2019 during a reconnaissance survey. A pair of gibbons were observed for the first time in mid December 2019 but only the male performed solo calls. The female joined the duets in early January 2020 and well coordinated duet calls were detected in mid January 2020. The newly formed family group lives on the forested
slopes of Mt Dongbengling, which rises to c. 850maltitude. Vegetation of the area is dominated by grassy shrubland and secondary lowland forest, with remnant primary forest sur- viving in ravines and near the summit. The northward low- land adjacent to Mt Dongbengling has been converted to a rubber plantation estate, and the gently sloping southern valley between Mt Dongbengling and Mt Futouling was once covered in pine plantations and fire-maintained grass- land, and must previously have presented an impassable barrier to the gibbons. Following natural succession the val- ley is now covered in forest, and the new gibbon group must have used it as a corridor to explore suitable lowland habitat to establish their territory beyond Mt Futouling. The ability of the Hainan gibbon to utilize secondary forest and sub- stantially expand its range is an encouraging sign for the
long-term survival of the species, which appears to be slowly but steadily recovering.
BOSCO PUI LOK CHAN (
orcid.org/0000-0003-4344-8086) and YIK FUI PHILIP LO Kadoorie Conservation China Department, Kadoorie Farm & Botanic Garden, Tai Po, Hong Kong E-mail
boscokf@kfbg.org
YANNI YO Hainan Wildlife Conservation and Management Bureau, Forestry Department of Hainan Province, Haikou, Hainan Province, China
Conserving Meconopsissmithiana, a Critically Endangered plant species in Yunnan, China
Meconopsis smithiana (Handel-Mazzetti) G. Taylor ex Handel-Mazzetti, a perennial herb species of the family Papaveraceae, is endemic to the southern Hengduan Mountains in south-west China and the extreme north-east of Myanmar. It was first collected by Handel-Mazzetti in north-west Yunnan in 1916, and described by him as Cathcartia smithiana in 1923 (H. Handel-Mazzetti, 1923, Anzeiger der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, Mathematisch-Naturwissenchaftliche Klasse, 60, 182). Since then, the species had only been collected a further four times, once each in 1938 and 1940, and twice in 1982,by Tse Tsun Yü, Kuo Mei Feng, and the Qinghai-Tibet Expedition, respectively. According to these collections (Tse Tsun Yü 20663; Kuo Mei Feng 8344; Qinghai- Tibet Expedition 8346, 8737), at the herbarium of the Kun- ming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, this species is only known from the Irrawaddy–Salween divide, in the southern Hengduan Mountains, an area of c. 4,000 km2 in western Yunnan. With the joint support of the Biodiversity Survey and
Assessment Project of the Ministry of Ecology and En- vironment of China (Grant No. 2019HJ2096001006), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 31770228), the Talent Project of Yunnan (Grant No. 2015HB092) and Yunnan Science and Technology Inno- vation Team Programme (Grant No. 2019HC015), the Kun- ming Institute of Botany surveyed for any remnant M. smithiana in the southern Hengduan Mountain range dur- ing July–September 2019. Fortunately, c. 200 individuals in flower (Plate 1) were discovered in five separate sites in moist grasslands at an altitude of 3,345 m. The total area of occu- pancy of the species in these sites is c. 1,800m2. This suggests that it should be categorized as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List on the basis of criterion B2ab(i,ii,iii,v). Also,
Oryx, 2020, 54(3), 296–298 © 2020 Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605320000150
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