Snow Mt Monkeys Recover
Posted by: Loren Coleman on February 9th, 2009
Yunnan golden monkeys (Rhinopithecus roxellanae) are seen at the Baima Snow Mountain State Nature Reserve in Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, southwest China’s Yunnan Province, Feb. 8, 2009. The number of Yunnan golden monkeys has risen from more than 500 in 1983 to around 1,300 at present at the nature reserve thanks to the protection efforts of local government and residents. (Xinhua Photo)
The population of a rare snub-nosed monkey species in a southwest China nature reserve has nearly tripled over the past 26 years, Xie Hongfang, chief of the reserve’s administration bureau, said Monday.
The population of the Yunnan snub-nosed monkeys in the Baima Snow Mountain Nature Reserve has seen growth from 500 in 1983 to about 1,300 now with the steady improvement of the ecological environment and a poaching crackdown.
More than 60 percent of the Yunnan snub-nosed monkeys live in the 190,000 hectare Baima Snow Mountain Nature Reserve in Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan.
The monkey, on the country’s top protection list, is one of the three types of endangered snub-nosed monkeys which make their home in southwest China – Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou. The Yunnan monkey currently has a population of about 2,000, mainly in Diqing and part of neighboring Tibet Autonomous Region.
“In recent years, the number of the Yunnan monkeys here has been increasing by some 30 to 40 every year,” said He Xinming, a nature reserve clerk in the Weixi County.
He said currently he frequently saw the wild monkeys playing near a local township seat but they were rarely seen by visitors, even five years ago. Xinhua
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
