Why are Cat Ba Langurs important and why should we care if this species goes extinct? No wildlife exists unless its ancestors lived in harmony with their surroundings for millions of years. Animals constantly alter the world they live in, so they had to have been part of healthy ecosystemsHow ecosystems function An ecosystem is a community of lifeforms that interact in such an optimal way that how ecosystems function best, is when all components (including humans and other animals) can persist and live alongside each other for the longest time possible. Ecosystems are fuelled by the energy created by plants (primary producers) that convert the Sun's heat energy More, to avoid extinction.
Quirks of geology mean species like Cat Ba Langur ended up highly specialised. This island endemic lives exclusively on the rocky limestone mountains of Cat Ba Island in Vietnam. From a population of thousands fifty years ago, numbers fell to 43 individuals. Neahga Leonard is director of the Cat Ba Langur Conservation Project. His work, primarily sponsored by Zoo Leipzig, is challenging. Population recovery has proved exceedingly slow, rising from 40-43 to just 68-70 animals in the wild since the project started in 2000. And that means it’s still one of the top three most endangered primates on Earth.
Cat Ba Langur ecology
Cat Ba Langurs live among razor-tipped limestone hills. At night they seek shelter under ledges or in caves on exposed vertical cliffs and in the day, they traverse precipitous terrain in search of leaves and fruit. Family groups roam an area no bigger than about fifty football fields. So, to survive, they have had to develop rituals, learning where to rest, play and feed. Thousands of years ago, routines like this may have allowed a few hundred groups to live side by side. Today, there are only about a dozen. Half of the island could as yet support langurs, enough room for hundreds if not thousands of individuals.
Cat Ba Langur isn’t just a symbol of environmental protection, it has to become a symbol of local identity and natural recovery.
The importance of cultural pride
‘The langurs are a local and national symbol of pride’ says Neahga. ‘If the langurs were not here’, he says ‘there would be no conservationWhy is animal conservation important? Animal conservation is important, because animals are the only mechanism to create biodiversity, which is the mechanism that creates a habitable planet for humans. Without animals, the energy from today’s plants (algae, trees, flowers etc) will eventually reach the atmosphere and ocean, much of it as carbon. The quantity of this plant-based waste is so More activities. We would not have the level of environmental protection we currently have’.
This is a critical point. The only way we know the health of our environment is by monitoring wildlife. But is this enough? If Cat Ba Langur goes extinct, would anyone notice in a hundred years? Would anyone really care now? I’m unconvinced it’s just about the value of preserving culture or identity. That’s important but doesn’t traditional culture descend from the natural value animals brought to our environment? Isn’t this what we’re trying to restore?
Cat Ba Langur connection to ecosystems
Is there a case for the connection between langurs, the health of the ecosystem and local culture? It’s hard to make that when the animals live on inaccessible mountainsides and people are largely sea-going. It’s even harder when the langurs are critically endangered. Neahga admits that ‘objectively, at its present population, the ecosystem role of the langurs is low’.
The role of animals in ecosystems isn’t just about who eats what. In this case, it’s about the cultivation of whole ecosystems. It’s about the physical rebuilding of the landscape, creating gaps and opportunities for a whole raft of species to co-exist and not outcompete each other. Monkeys are a destructive force for good. They have to be, or else they couldn’t survive. Every branch broken, fruit consumed, leaf chewed and defecated isn’t a random process. Animal behaviour follows routines, patterns that have evolved in synchronicity with seasons.
MegafaunaThe largest animals that represent the top of the trophic pyramid. These are the final building blocks in ecosystem structures for maximum entropy production. Megafauna can be measured at any spatial scale. The largest animal that ever lived on Earth is the Blue Whale. In a grassland, spiders could be considered megafauna The term is generally reserved for animals larger More like Cat Ba Langur helped engineer the diversity necessary to make ecosystems function(Of an ecosystem). A subset of ecosystem processes and structures, where the ecosystem does something that provides an ecosystem service of value to people. More healthily. They transfer(of nutrients) the thing that sets animals apart from plants, is that they can move. Some of the biggest migrations on Earth every day, are the movement of insects like caterpillars, from the stem of a plant to a leaf and back, before turning into butterflies and transferring the energy elsewhere. Large-scale migration of grazing animals and migratory songbirds moves More nutrientsEnergy and nutrients are the same thing. Plants capture energy from the Sun and store it in chemicals, via the process of photosynthesis. The excess greenery and waste that plants create, contain chemicals that animals can eat, in order to build their own bodies and reproduce. When a chemical is used this way, we call it a nutrient. As we More from sea level to mountain top. At the same time, they reap the rewards, minimising the amount of plant waste that would wash into the sea. Limestone karst is an extraordinary landscape, rich in plant diversity and highly porous. Monsoon rain cascades off the mountains and runs through hidden cave systems. It’s the impact of animals that would keep the water clean and fresh, while exquisitely balancing nutrientA substance that contains the raw materials for life. At a chemical level, these are contained inside compounds that are absorbed into the body and essential energy-containing molecules are extracted, so that energy can be transformed into other chemical processes that use the energy for living. More load into the surrounding sea. A dominant source of sediment has always been the rivers that wash soil from the Himalayan deltas. More recently, these ecosystems have also fallen victim to the effect of deforestation and animal extinction, leading to rising levels of nutrients and pollution.
The human benefits of wildlife conservation
We might not be able to say that primates directly condition ecosystems but it is likely that the loss of thousands have led to an immeasurably degraded environment. Cat Ba Island is less diverse, less resilient and less giving than it used to be. The benefits we might have received from the langurs have become obscured.
The actions of animals like Cat Ba Langur are connected to indigenous activities and tourism economies. The erosion of environmental values over the last century or more, pollution of coastal waters and loss of fish and marine mammals, is connected to the health of the mountain as much as anywhere else. BiodiversityWhat is the definition of biodiversity? When we ask, what is the definition of biodiversity? It depends on what we want to do with it. The term is widely and commonly misused, leading to significant misinterpretation of the importance of how animals function on Earth and why they matter a great deal, to human survival. Here I will try to More loss is happening everywhere because we are allowing wildlife to go extinct.
Cat Ba Langur isn’t just a symbol of environmental protection, it has to become a symbol of local identity and natural recovery.
So, it’s comforting to know, that through his work, Neahga has seen a sense of pride building among local communities. More people today identify with the langur as something special to them. There is a commitment to reversing damage done in the past and this motivates people to care about having a role in the species’ future and hopefully in their own future.
Hopes for the future
Today, Neahga, explains they coordinate anti-poaching teams from the local community. There are also reforestation projects and environmental education programs. This work done by the Cat Ba Langur Conservation Project, extends to halting illegal hunting of migratory birds and attempting to develop responsible tourism. This is a particularly difficult struggle in an area renowned for stunning limestone karst scenery where there is constant pressure of new hotel developments.
What if Cat Ba Island’s ecosystems, tourism and fisheries cannot function into the future without the langurs? Surely, we can see that the mountains and forest we have today, ones with disastrously low numbers of these majestic primates, are not the ones we need for the future. We need those mountains and forests replete with their full complement of animals and plants. There is no doubt in my mind, that restoring Cat Ba Langur populations and all the wildlife that benefit alongside, represents more than something symbolic.
Support the Cat Ba Langur Project
The project is seeking assistance for any durable, useful field equipment that will be put to good use by staff, anti-poaching teams in the villages, or rangers working to protect the langurs and other species on Cat Ba Island. The project is sponsored by Zoo Leipzig, with support also from ZGAP and Allwetterzoo Münster
Huge thank you to Neahga Leonard for his comments on this article. Find him on Reddit and Twitter and read his blog here.
Spotlight
Endangered Primates on Cat Ba Island – a blog by Neahga Leonard
The time passes quickly and there is far less time to write personal things then I thought there would be, and so, so much to write about. I’m sure people would love to know about the amazing array of colorful butterflies and other insects, the brilliant sunsets, the stunning plant diversity, or the stark landscape, but what people are probably most interested in is the langurs … read more.
