Using historical records from China dating back more than four centuries, researchers from the international conservation group, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), have reconstructed the decline and fall of one of the country’s most threatened species, the gibbon.
The research, led by ZSL senior research fellow Dr. Samuel Turvey, involved detailed analysis of ancient historical records starting as early as 1600 AD, encompassing both the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and stretching into the modern-day Communist period of China.
Just a few hundred years ago, gibbons could be found distributed across nearly half of China. Their populations started to collapse during the 20th century, however, and now the rare apes survive in only a few remote forest regions in the southwest.
In fact, one species, the Hainan gibbon (Nomascus hainanus), is now said to be among the rarest mammals on Earth, with a total population of just 26 to 28 individuals, they added. The study has been called one of the first uses of historical documents to reconstruct the decline of a species, and it appears in the latest edition of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Documents indicate decline started about 150 years ago
According to BBC News, the apes originally started to disappear from the documents reviewed by the ZSL-led team approximately 150 years ago, or around the same time that human populations began to grow and thrive. Currently, the Hainan gibbons live in just four social groups, including one discovered only a few weeks ago in the forests of southwestern China.
In a statement, Dr. Turvey explained that gibbons “were of great cultural importance” to ancient China because it was believed that the creatures could “channel mystical ‘qi energy’ and live for several hundred years.” While BBC said that it has been difficult to understand the creature’s population crash, the historical records have shed new light on the mystery.
“China has a fantastically rich historical record, which includes a wealth of environmental data that has rarely been used for conservation management,” the ZSL researcher said, adding that the past presence of the gibbons throughout the country was “widely recorded in local documents.”
“Reconstructing when – and why – different gibbon populations disappeared across much of China can teach us important lessons that can help save the country’s last few gibbons,” he added in the statement. “Because of the current environmental crisis facing eastern and southeast Asia, we have to explore new ways to better understand the kinds of factors that can make species more or less vulnerable to extinction.”
(Image credit: Thinkstock)
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