HAIKOU /China/, Oct 27. /TASS/. South China's Hainan province this week established the Global Gibbon Network (GGN), which will coordinate international efforts to protect these animals. As the Hainan Daily newspaper reported, the establishment of the organization was announced at the 2022 Tropical Rainforest International Conservation Symposium in Haikou city.
According to the newspaper, China's leading primate experts attended the event. Many of them pointed to the important role the GGN can play in increasing biodiversity on the planet.
"The founding of this network can be called another step of China's 'environmental diplomacy,'" said Zhang Xinsheng, former chairman of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and a leading expert at the Hainan National Park Research Institute (HNP). "Over the past two years, the HNP has become an open research site of global significance, <...> which will actively promote the formation of a worldwide gibbon and rainforest conservation system."
The HNP was established by China with the help of 13 organizations from several countries around the world working on issues that concern the protection of gibbons. Its headquarters will be located in Haikou. Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand are among the states that have expressed interest in creating the union.
The forests of the southernmost Chinese province are home to Hainan gibbons, whose population has recently increased to 36 individuals. They prefer to live in the treetops at a height of about 10 meters, which makes it very difficult to monitor these animals, which do not breed well in artificial conditions. The rare primates eat both plant foods and small animals. In China, they are under the strict protection of the state, and there is every reason to believe that their numbers will increase.