Primate conservation—newreports from the field ANTHO N Y B. RYL AN DS,RUSSE LL A. MITTERMEIER and E LI ZA B E TH A. WIL LIAMSO N
The September 2020 tally of the IUCN Species Survival Commission Primate Specialist Group lists 507 species, 716 subspecies and 80 genera of primates. Ninety-five pri- mates—13%of the primate taxa known today—were first de- scribed just in this millennium. The majority, 52 of them, are lemurs, along with seven primates from Africa, 15 from Asia, and 21 from the Neotropics. That so many new species can be discovered in this developed age is astonishing. As has been repeatedly documented, hunting—mostly il-
legal—and the devastation of habitats, unabated through the 1980s and 1990s and into the 21st century, have resulted in widespread population declines. The 2008 IUCN Red List assessment for primates included 634 species and sub- species: 303 (48%) were ranked as threatened. Forty-three (45%) of 96 lemurs, however, were categorized as Data De- ficient. A follow-up workshop for the lemurs in 2012 ad- dressed the data gaps, and the result was a new total of 358 threatened primates, 56%of 643 then assessed. Following Red-Listing workshops from 2015 onward, including a se- cond for lemurs in 2018, the latest update of the Red List (2020-2, July 2020) now has 709 primates assessed, with 440 (62%) categorized as threatened. The 2012 lemur Red List assessment listed 94 species and
subspecies as threatened: 23 Critically Endangered (22%of the 103 assessed) and 52 as Endangered (51%). The 2018 re- assessment determined that 105 lemurs were threatened, with 34 Critically Endangered (31%ofthe 111 assessed) and 45 Endangered (40.5%). The number categorized as Vulner- able increased from 19 in 2012 to 26 in 2018. Currently only two lemurs are categorized as Least Concern! With nearly all lemurs threatened, we are seeing their gradual progres- sion from Vulnerable to Critically Endangered. The change in numbers for the African primates from the 2008 to the 2020 Red Lists also reflects increasing endangerment. Sixty- three (37%) African primates were categorized as threatened in 2008,and 99 (51%) in
2020.New assessmentsof 96 Neotropical primates and 89 Asian primates have yet to be posted on the Red List website. Sixty-two per cent of all primates are threatened.. . and counting! So what is being done about this? The Red List assess- ment process provides a framework for what we need to
ANTHONY B. RYLANDS* (Corresponding author) and RUSSELL A. MITTERMEIER* IUCN Species Survival Commission Primate Specialist Group E-mail
arylands@globalwildlife.org
ELIZABETH A. WILLIAMSON Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Stirling, Stirling, UK
understand—information on demographics, populations, habitat requirements and loss, extent of occurrence, area of occupancy, threats, and conservation measures in place. Once compiled for a species, the question is: what ap- proaches are needed for its conservation? The obvious strat- egy is to deal with the threats, be they pernicious processes (hunting, illegal wildlife trade, emerging infectious diseases and epidemics, forest loss, degradation and fragmenta- tion, and negative interactions with people) or catastrophic events (resource extraction such as logging and mining, and infrastructure development, including roads and dams, which spark the colonization of once remote forests). The other strategy is remedial, with mitigatory measures dealing with the safety and growth of the remaining pop- ulations, or population, as the case may be. The key tools are protected areas and community conservation areas. Others target conservation management: population sur- veys and monitoring (now benefitting from satellite im- agery, camera traps, drones and genetic studies), law en- forcement, disease prevention, reforestation, enrichment of degraded forests, wildlife corridors and bridges, land-use planning, captive breeding, population genetics, rewilding, translocation and the control of invasive species. The Primate Specialist Group focuses on its mission of
zero extinctions for the primate order. This has included a wide range of activities, from Red-Listing, conservation ac- tion plans, the establishment of best practices, funding for numerous conservation projects, and the maintenance of communications networks, especially through its five jour- nals. The first action planwas a global strategy (Mittermeier, 1977), which was followed by regional plans for Asia, Africa, Madagascar and Mesoamerica, and many species-specific plans, including, since 2003, for the great apes. The eight articles in this issue of Oryx present an array
of research initiatives encompassing 11 primates, all threat- ened. They focus on field surveys, but with objectives and methods suited to the particularities of the status, distri- bution and habitats of each species. Using the traditional survey technique of line transects with distance sampling, Yanuar et al. (2020) estimated densities of the north-west Bornean orangutan Pongo pongo pygmaeus, counting nests in the peat swamps between two protected areas. They docu- mented a decline in numbers and ascertained that densities were lower than in the nearby protected areas. Twenty-three of the 26 gibbon species and subspecies
are now ranked as Endangered or Critically Endangered. Syxaiyakhamthor et al. (2020) surveyed the northern white- cheeked gibbon Nomascus leucogenys in the Nam Et-Phou
*Also at: Global Wildlife Conservation, Austin, Texas, USA Oryx, 2020, 54(6), 751–752 © Fauna & Flora International 2020 doi:10.1017/S0030605320000939
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