CRAIG KIRKPATRICK is amused when he recalls how he went a whole year without
a shower. 鈥淎fter a while you develop a patina,鈥� he says. As for deodorant: wood
smoke proved more overpowering even than the smell of four men and a chicken
confined in a tiny research station.
Field studies are all in a day鈥檚 work for ecologists. But Kirkpatrick鈥檚
efforts to understand the life history of an elusive monkey with bright red lips
and a snub nose have taken him further afield than most. From the University of
California, Davis, to China鈥檚 Yunnan province on the border with Tibet, to be
precise. For 16 months he and his colleagues endured the harsh, cold environment
of Baimaxueshan Nature Reserve in the foothills of the Himalayas. They lived
without running water or electricity, and their food supplies had to be trekked
up from the nearest village on donkeys. But this privation has been rewarded.
Kirkpatrick and his team have gained the first insight into the lifestyle of a
most unusual primate: the Yunnan snub-nosed monkey, Rhinopithecus bieti.
Equally important, the findings have helped conservationists take the sort of
positive action that would have been unimaginable a decade ago.
Pioneering mission
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China contains a treasure trove of rare and unstudied animals and plants.
When Kirkpatrick arrived in 1986, he was one of the first Western scientists on
the scene, and the government was just opening up previously restricted areas of
the country. Since then the picture has been transformed. China now has a
grassroots environment movement that hopes to protect its wildlife and habitats
from the effects of the country鈥檚 rapid industrialisation. Over the past decade,
Chinese researchers and citizens have come to realise how fragile their natural
resources are in the face of this threat. The Yunnan snub-nosed monkey is one
the beneficiaries.
The first time Kirkpatrick saw Yunnan snub-noses they were perched in conifer
trees and casually eyeing him across a deep ravine. Their indifference
contrasted with the American ecologist鈥檚 excitement. For him, this moment was
the culmination of several years as a lone Westerner travelling across China,
getting to know local scientists and struggling to learn enough Chinese to get
by in rural outposts. 鈥淭he reason I was in the field alone wasn鈥檛 because I was
the only person who was interested or qualified,鈥� says Kirkpatrick. 鈥淚t was
because I had the perseverance鈥攐r stupidity鈥攖o put up with the
`yeses鈥� that meant no and the `noes鈥� that meant yes, to drink tea with
bureaucrats for endless hours, chain-smoke cigarettes and drink liquor with
local villagers, and stumble around in the fractured language that passes as my
颁丑颈苍别蝉别.鈥�
Kirkpatrick鈥檚 association with China began at a time when the government was
suddenly allowing tourists into previously restricted areas. He and another
ecologist, Chris Carpenter, were more than tourists: they were the first Western
scientists to visit nature reserves that China had established over the previous
four decades. This fact-finding mission turned into nine months of travel, from
the bustle of Shanghai to the remote mountains of Tibet.
During the journey Kirkpatrick fell in love with China, and was especially
captivated by Yunnan province, where several ethnic Chinese groups live in a
harsh, mountainous landscape. Here the continental Asian and Indian tectonic
plates collide, wrinkling the Earth into high peaks, and sharp ravines are
formed by the Yangtze, Mekong and Salween rivers. This mixed geography is echoed
in a variety of habitats: everything from dry chaparral at river edges to
conifer forests at high altitudes. And in the latter, Kirkpatrick learnt, lived
the Yunnan snub-nosed monkey, an animal that had been described by Chinese
researchers but never subjected to any long-term observation.
The Yunnan snub-nosed monkey, with its red lips, black body and white chest
is the largest of the langurs, a type of colobine monkey found throughout Africa
and Asia and known for its ability to digest huge quantities of leaves. China
has six species, including three of the snub-nosed variety, which are tucked
into isolated patches of either tropical or temperate forests. Of these, both
the Yunnan and the Guizhou langur (Rhinopithecus brelichi) are on the
verge of extinction with just 2000 individuals each. The golden monkey (
Rhinopithecus roxellana)鈥攁 national favourite seen on cigarette
labels, toothpaste tubes and detergent boxes in China鈥攊s doing better but
is still endangered. 鈥淭hey are all threatened by the usual pressures of
development, in particular logging and mining,鈥� says Nina Jablonski,
associate curator of anthropology at the California Academy of Sciences, who
has studied langurs in China since 1985. 鈥淭his is despite the fact that they
live in national nature reserves.鈥�
Social animals
The Baimaxueshan Nature Reserve, which is home to some 10 per cent of the
Yunnan snub-nosed monkey population, is cold and isolated, rising to 5200
metres. Here, Kirkpatrick returned in 1992 with Long Youngcheng from Yunnan鈥檚
Kunming Institute of Zoology and two Tibetan field assistants. Long had
previously directed a population survey of Yunnan snub-nosed monkeys and
confirmed their distribution across the province and in the reserve.
Research began in earnest in 1993, and within 16 months the team had a
reasonable take on monkey movements. Yunnan snub-noses, it appears, are unique
among langurs. In other species, a single male associates with several adult
females and their young to form a small family group. The Yunnan monkeys at
Baimaxueshan form 15 to 18 such units, but these conglomerate into a single
large group of about 175 animals. Other colobines exhibit infrequent social
contact between individuals, but Yunnan snub-noses are different. Watching them
from a distance, the researchers could see that the monkeys spent about 10 per
cent of their time grooming troop mates. Juveniles interacted extensively with
infants. The researchers report that the whole troop travels together, and tends
to huddle closely when resting. And compared with other colobines, these animals
have an immense home range鈥攁bout 25 square kilometres鈥攚hich they
cover by moving 1500 metres or so each day.
Lichen-eaters
Kirkpatrick and his colleagues discovered that the key to the monkey鈥檚 large
group size and extensive home range is its unusual feeding habits. Instead of
relying on deciduous leaves, as a good colobine should, the Yunnan snub-nose
dines mainly on lichen. This has its advantages. First, it is abundant. Most of
the local fir trees are dripping with Bryoria, a fruticose, or 鈥渂ushy鈥�
lichen. Secondly, the lichen is easier to digest than leaves. While the Yunnan
monkeys have the razor-sharp teeth, ruminant-like stomach and the special gut
bacteria used by other colobines to extract nutrients from leaves, they choose
instead to eat the more easily digested lichen. The downside is that the lichen
takes decades to regenerate. So the monkeys are forced to cover a wide area and
maintain a large home range simply to keep themselves fed.
To determine exactly how much lichen each Yunnan snub-nosed monkey needs, the
researchers gathered Bryoriaand dried it over a field stove fuelled by
coal so that Kirkpatrick could anlayse the nutrient content back at the
laboratory. In his recently completed dissertation, Kirkpatrick notes that
compared to leaves, this particular lichen is low in protein, low in fibre and
high in simple carbohydrates. Bryoria has few of the tannins that are
present in leaves and can be toxic if eaten in large quantities. The lichen is
also free from phenolics and strychnine, which are dangerous even in small
amounts. Bryoria is essentially the popcorn of primate food鈥攊t is
mostly air, not too bad for you, and if you eat enough you will get by.
Kirkpatrick estimated that each monkey eats some 22 handfuls or about 840
grams of Bryoria a day. At this feeding rate, the troop would consume
about 160 kilograms of lichen each day, the yield of about 0.8 hectares. So to
sustain themselves for a year, the group needs about three square kilometres. To
find out how long it takes the Bryoria to regenerate, the researchers
removed it from several trees and watched it grow back. They estimate that it
takes around 15 years for the lichen to recover after being stripped. This
explains the monkey鈥檚 large home range.
Group dynamics
But why do Yunnan snub-noses live in such a large troop when they could cut
down on the size of the range they need and the time they have to travel simply
by living in smaller family groups? Kirkpatrick believes that the key is their
reliance on Bryoria. 鈥淚ntra-group food competition may be low due to
the ubiquitous nature of Bryoria, and the large patches of
Bryoria may induce the formation of large groups,鈥� he concludes. In the
short term, says Kirkpatrick, the diet of lichen seems to act as a peacemaker,
allowing monkeys to congregate in large numbers, as most primates like to do.
The social and protective benefits of being together as an integrated group must
outweigh the disadvantage of having to travel farther afield in the long term.
Yunnan snub-noses only act like the one-male units found in other colobines when
mating introduces competition among males. The researchers are still not sure
exactly how this works, though they did notice that from time to time subgroups
split off from the main troop to mate.
The Yunnan snub-nose鈥檚 dependence on a large home range does, however, leave
it more vulnerable to the destruction of its habitat than some other colobine
species. Last year this danger was brought home by a plan to log an area just
outside the Baimaxueshan reserve that was still within the animals鈥� range.
Luckily the monkey had friends in high places. When Xi Zhinong, then the public
relations officer of the Yunnan Ministry of Forestry, heard about the plan he
denounced it on national television. The noted environmental writer Tang Xiyang
and the founder of the Chinese Friends of Nature, Liang Congjie, joined the
campaign to protect the monkey. Their efforts finally brought the issue to the
attention of Song Jian, Minister of Science and Technology in Beijing. He urged
the provincial government in Yunnan to temporarily stop the planned logging. So,
for now at least, the habitat of the Yunnan snub-nosed monkey has been
reprieved.
And not only the monkeys. The high-altitude conifer woods in which they live
are themselves rare. The Yunnan snub-nosed monkeys, with their unusual diet of
lichen, depend for their survival on large areas of this habitat remaining
intact. This makes the monkey a good 鈥渦mbrella species鈥� for
conservation鈥攖o save it you must also protect a rare habitat with all the
other species that it contains.
Kirkpatrick鈥檚 findings come at a crucial time for the environment and
conservation in China鈥攁s students and an increasingly influential urban
middle class are raising awareness of the issues. Like all industrialising
countries, China must find a balance between conservation and development goals.
Inevitably, the move from an agrarian-based economy to industrialisation takes
its toll on the Earth, by consuming resources and polluting what remains. 鈥淣o
one really knows how to lift a nation out of poverty and still make sure that
natural resources aren鈥檛 destroyed,鈥� comments Daniel Viederman, the World Wide
Fund for Nature coodinator for China.
The optimistic view is that China can learn from the mistakes of Western
industrialised countries. At this stage in its development it still has a chance
to do things differently鈥攖o mark off nature reserves, conserve and
preserve. Safeguarding the future of a lichen-eating monkey from the remote
mountains of a frontier province might be one way for China to hold on to its
natural wealth.
The positive response that greeted Kirkpatrick鈥檚 research is symptomatic of a
growing interest in conservation, especially among younger educated Chinese.
鈥淏ack in 1986, I had some hope of keeping track of what was going on in
conservation and wildlife biology in China,鈥� says Kirkpatrick. 鈥淣ow it鈥檚 not
possible. I hope, ten years from now, some of these students will be doing great
work in this field.鈥�