HAIKOU, August 25. /TASS/. China's Forestry Administration approved the establishment of the Center for the Protection and Study of Hainan Gibbons. According to www.hinews.cn, this was announced following the results of an international symposium held on August 20-21 in Haikou on the problem of protecting endangered Hainan gibbons.
The new research center will operate under China's Forestry Administration. The symposium also announced the establishment of the Hainan Gibbon Volunteer Conservation Association.
"The Hainan gibbon, under state protection, is the oldest surviving gibbon in the world. It can be found only in China. Currently, there is only one population of these primates, numbering 30 individuals, which live in the rainforests of the Island of Hainan. The International Union for Conservation of Nature declared the Hainan gibbon an endangered species, which tops the list of 25 other endangered primate species in the world," the local media reported.
The symposium participants noted the importance and urgency of the task for Hainan, China and the whole world to protect the Hainan gibbon population, restore tropical forests as their natural habitat and build an ecological civilization in which humans and nature coexist in harmony, the media outlet writes.
Due to uncontrolled hunting and large-scale deforestation, the number of Hainan gibbons on the island from the 1950s decreased from 2000 species to 7 in the 1980s. To save them from total extinction, the local government created the Bawanlin Nature Reserve in the area where the last surviving primates of this species were discovered. Following that move, an intensive planting of trees, which are vital for these primates, was initiated in the conservation area. Over the past two decades, about 100,000 trees were planted, which allowed to restore the forests to some extend.
The Hainan gibbons, currently preserved only on this Chinese island, rarely descend to the ground, preferring to live on trees at an altitude of about 10 meters. All these factors significantly complicate their maintenance and population growth in artificial conditions.