<
https://news.mongabay.com/2023/07/meet-the-kipunji-a-rare-primate-success-story-in-tanzania/>
"In January 2003, when Wildlife Conservation Society researchers working in
Tanzania’s Southern Highlands heard from local hunters that there was a monkey
called the kipunji living on the slopes of Mount Rungwe, they didn’t know what
to think. They had never heard of the kipunji, but the local Wanyakyusa are
storytellers, and the line between the real and mythical is often blurred.
Then, in May that year, while doing biodiversity surveys in the Southern
Highlands, the researchers caught their first glimpse of a strange primate. It
took many months of trekking through the steep forested slopes on the heels of
these elusive monkeys before they got a good look. Only then could they confirm
that the kipunji — with its light-brown tufted triangular crest, black face, a
muzzle similar to a baboon’s, and a loud honking call — was a species new to
Western science.
In a strange coincidence, in July 2004, researchers working in Tanzania’s
Udzungwa Mountains some 350 kilometers (220 miles) to the northeast, also
discovered what they believed was a new primate. In 2005, the two teams jointly
published a paper in the journal
Science describing the new species. They
initially dubbed it the highland mangabey (
Lophocepus kipunji), but later,
following genetic analysis of a dead specimen, they renamed it the kipunji
(
Rungwecebus kipunji), putting it into its own genus, meaning it wasn’t
closely related to any other monkey. This made the kipunji the first new
primate genus described in Africa in more than 80 years.
But with excitement of the new discovery came deep concern. The kipunji and its
forest habitat, rich in biodiversity and endemic species found nowhere else,
were in trouble. The Mt. Rungwe and Livingstone Range Forest in the Southern
Highlands, home to nearly 95% of the kipunji population, wasn’t in a national
park; tree felling, charcoal making and poaching were common. Farms pushed
right up against the forest’s edge, threatening to sever the ecosystem and
isolate kipunji groups. In the Udzungwa Mountains, where scientists uncovered
the second kipunji population, the forest was in better condition — but the
kipunji population there was very small. The first census, done in 2007, put
the total kipunji population, at both sites combined, at just 1,117
individuals."
Via
Future Crunch:
<
https://futurecrunch.com/good-news-wash-poverty-usa-seabird-conservation/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
