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["Ellen Payne" <makithecat AT gmail.com>]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/science/23monk.html?_r=1&8dpc&oref=slogin

September 23, 2008
 It Takes Just One Village to Save a Species By PHIL MCKENNA
New York Times

CHONGZUO, China — Long ago, in the poverty-stricken hills of southern China,
a village banished its children to the forest to feed on wild fruits and
leaves. Years later, when food stores improved, the children's parents
returned to the woods to reclaim their young.

To their surprise, their offspring had adapted to forest life remarkably
well; the children's white headdresses had dissolved into fur, tails grew
from their spines and they refused to come home.

At the Nongguan Nature Reserve in Chongzuo, Guangxi province, the real-life
descendants of these mythical children — monkeys known as white-headed
langurs — still swing through the forest canopy.

As the langurs traverse a towering karst peak in a setting out of a Chinese
landscape painting, they appear untouched by time and change, but it is
remarkable that they and their tropical forest home have survived. In 1996,
when the langurs were highly endangered, Pan Wenshi, China's premier panda
biologist, came to study them in Chongzuo at what was then an abandoned
military base. This was at a time when hunters were taking the canary-yellow
young langurs from their cliff-face strongholds, and villagers were leveling
the forest for firewood.

Dr. Pan quickly hired wardens to protect the remaining animals but then went
a step further, taking on the larger social and economic factors
jeopardizing the species. Dr. Pan recognized the animal's origin myth as
legend, but he also believed that alleviating the region's continuing
poverty was essential for their long-term survival.

In the 24-square-kilometer nature reserve where he has focused his studies,
the langur population increased to more than 500 today from 96 in 1996.

"It's a model of what can be done in hot-spot areas that have been
devastated by development," said Russell A. Mittermeier, the president of
Conservation International. "Pan has combined all the elements — protection,
research, ecotourism, good relations with the local community; he's really
turned the langur into a flagship for the region."

Part of what makes Dr. Pan's achievements so remarkable is the success he is
having compared with the fate of primates elsewhere. According to the
International Union for Conservation of Nature's most recent Red List,
nearly half of the world's 634 primate species and subspecies are in danger
of extinction. "If you look at the Red List, Asia has by far the highest
percentage in the threatened categories," Dr. Mittermeier said.

When Dr. Pan arrived in Guangxi, the challenges of studying langurs, much
less protecting them, seemed insurmountable. He and a student spent their
first two years living in collapsing cinder block barracks with no
electricity or running water.

At that time, the langur's population was in freefall, dropping from an
estimated 2,000 individuals in the late 1980s to fewer than 500 a decade
later. Historically, local farmers had occasionally killed langurs for food,
but then teams of outside hunters began taking a serious toll on the
population.

"In the 1990s, the Chinese economy started booming, and those with money —
governors, factory owners, businessmen — all wanted to eat the wildlife to
show how powerful they were," said Dr. Pan, 71.

A breakthrough in protecting the species came in 1997 when he helped local
villagers build a pipeline to secure clean drinking water. Shortly
thereafter, a farmer from the village freed a trapped langur and brought it
to Dr. Pan.

"When you help the villagers, they would like to help you back," he said.

As self-appointed local advocate, Dr. Pan raised money for a new school in
another village, oversaw the construction of health clinics in two
neighboring towns and organized physicals for women throughout the area.

"Now, when outsiders try to trap langurs," Dr. Pan said, "the locals stop
them from coming in."

But the villagers were still dependent on the reserve's trees for fuel.

"If I told them they can't cut down the trees, that wouldn't be right," Dr.
Pan said. "They have to feed their families."

In 2000, he received a $12,500 environmental award from Ford Motor Company.
He used the money to build biogas digesters — concrete-lined pits that
capture methane gas from animal waste — to provide cooking fuel for roughly
1,000 people.

Based on the project's success, the federal government financed a sevenfold
increase in construction of tanks to hold biogas. Today, 95 percent of the
population living just outside the reserve burn biogas in their homes.

As a result, the park's number and diversity of trees — the langurs' primary
habitat and sole food source — has increased significantly.

"When I first came, the hillsides were very rocky," Dr. Pan said. "Now it's
hard to see the rocks and even harder to see the langurs because of all the
trees."

Nearly all money for Dr. Pan's development projects has come from outside
the region, but his efforts have not gone unnoticed by local officials. In
2001, the county government built a research center in the reserve with
accommodations for Dr. Pan and his students, a guesthouse and a yet-to-be
completed education center to showcase the region's biodiversity.

Still, those who would like to exploit the scenic beauty of the park remain.
One recent proposal included a five-star hotel that would turn the would-be
education center into a
gambling<http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/pathological-gambling/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier>hall
and cockfighting pavilion.

In 2002, when Dr. Pan inaugurated the Chongzuo Eco-Park, a small part of the
Nongguan Nature Reserve that is open to the public, he had a quote from the
ancient Chinese philosopher Mencius carved into stone at the front gate. The
phrase, "In an ideal society, everyone should work for the well being of
others," was a subtle reminder to local officials that the park should not
be misused for their own financial gain. But the quote also reminds those
looking to protect the langurs that they must consider the area's human
community.

"This is the most important thing we can do," Dr. Pan said. "If the
villagers can't feed themselves, the langurs don't stand a chance."

Dr. Pan is a charismatic leader who is as quick to lead his students into
the field under grueling conditions as to don a langur costume at local
festivals to raise awareness about the species.

He got his start in wildlife conservation in 1980 studying the giant panda
in Sichuan province with the biologist George Schaller of the Wildlife
Conservation 
Society<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/w/wildlife_conservation_society/index.html?inline=nyt-org>,
based at the Bronx
Zoo<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/b/bronx_zoo_wildlife_conservation_park/index.html?inline=nyt-org>.
Mr. Schaller left China in 1985, but Dr. Pan spent 11 more years in the
field, and his resulting work proved instrumental in conserving critical
panda habitat.

Yet his greatest achievement may well be what he has passed on to the next
generation. In 1991, he founded Peking University's department of
conservation biology — now the Center for Nature and Society — one of the
first institutions in China dedicated to studying and protecting endangered
species.

Currently staffed by 10 of Dr. Pan's former students, the department
conducts fieldwork on everything from dolphins in the South China Sea to
snow leopards on the Tibetan Plateau.

Dr. Pan became interested in langurs in the early '90s after reading
"Sociobiology: The New Synthesis," a groundbreaking book by Edward O.
Wilson<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/w/edward_o_wilson/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,
the Harvard biologist, environmentalist and writer. It suggested that
certain social behaviors were evolutionarily advantageous. Dr. Pan wanted to
test Dr. Wilson's ideas in the field, but needed a more gregarious species
than the panda, which lives primarily in solitude.

He has been studying langurs since 1996 and has observed numerous cases of
infanticide — where an adult male that had taken over a family group killed
all newborns sired by the prior reigning male. The primary intent of
infanticide is not to kill, but to induce nursing females to start ovulating
quickly and thus increase the usurping male's chances of reproducing.
Infanticide had been documented in other species, but he was the first to
observe it in white-headed langurs.

Based on observations of male langur succession events that did not involve
infanticide, Dr. Pan suspects the animal's reproductive strategy may be
evolving to include negotiated settlements between males. In such cases, two
males have divided adult females and territory among themselves without
killing any newborns.

"I'd like to know how closely related the males are," says Patricia C.
Wright of Stony Brook
University<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/s/state_university_of_new_york_at_stony_brook/index.html?inline=nyt-org>in
New York of Dr. Pan's latest observations, "but it opens up a lot of
interesting theoretical possibilities."

Back in Chongzuo, Dr. Pan led a small group into a meadow of tallgrass
surrounded by limestone karsts. Above them, a family of langurs leaped
across a forested cliff face toward a rock ledge where they would spend the
night. He hopes descendants of these monkeys will spread beyond the reserve
to repopulate nearby mountains just as other scientists will continue the
work he has started.

"I cannot do all of the conservation work that is needed here in China," Dr.
Pan said, "but my students and many others will continue toward this goal."