In 2010, International Year of Biodiversity, primates are going extinct

Okay, that’s it. Although never a fan of Communism, since my first scientific meeting there in 1993, I used to defend some of China’s environmental policies to my friends. Alone among countries, its one-child policy has prevented untold privation, poverty, death, and concomitant environmental destruction by preventing unchecked population growth. After massive deforestation during the Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward, since the 1980s it has sustained the most massive tree-planting program on the planet. Yes, its water and air quality are bad throughout the populous eastern provinces, but the Ministry of Environmental Protection has greatly improved its laws and is planning more. But I’m done defending China’s environmental record.
Two recent scientific papers caught my eye: First, after years of warnings, a species of gibbon, the Lar or White-handed Gibbon, was confirmed extirpated from China and more species are likely to follow soon. Second, a 2009 report showed a photograph of forearm bones from another species, the White-cheeked Gibbon, being used as chopsticks in Guangnali, China.
The former is endangered globally, and the latter is critically endangered. In fact, all of the 12 to 15 (scientists aren’t even sure) gibbon species are either endangered or critically endangered except for the eastern Hoolock, which is merely vulnerable. The most endangered live in the mountains bordering Vietnam, Laos and China. The Hainan Black-crested Gibbon and four other primates (langurs and snub-nosed monkeys) of China and Vietnam are among the 25 most endangered primates in the world, each with not more than a few hundred individuals. Why? Although deforestation is a deplorable cause everywhere, when populations get down to low levels in fragmented habitats, poaching hastens their destruction. Rampant and uncontrolled hunting is the most immediate threat for the most endangered primates throughout Southeast Asia. Such is the demand in China that illegally poached primates or their parts are imported from as far away as Borneo, Sumatra, and Peninsular Malaysia. But poachers in Vietnam and Laos can walk across the border. This is 2010, the International Year of Biodiversity!
I had already known about the huge demand in China and Vietnam for monkey meat, other parts, and the pet trade. In Hanoi, one can purchase an elixir made from their blood. But chopsticks!
Gibbons, the “lesser apes,” are in the same superfamily as Humans, the Hominoidea, and branched off from our family line about 17 million years ago. Compared with other apes, gibbons are small, slender, and agile, exhibit no sexual dimorphism, and have very long arms adapted for a spectacular arm swinging locomotion called “brachiation.” Like us, the males of mated pairs care for infants. Gibbons have been called the “poster child for monogamy” among the primates. I put more on their biology in my last post.
Canada and China signed the Convention on Biological Diversity in 1992; Vietnam followed in 1993 and Laos in 1996. We are all members of the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species (Canada 1975, China 1981, Vietnam 1994, Laos 2004). This means our bureaucrats meet together at least annually to manage implementation of the treaties. Outside of these conventions, China and Canada have a long history of environmental cooperation. For just one example, Canada’s Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) has always been the “lead” donor for the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development, established in 1992. Its secretariat office, in the Simon Fraser University David Lam Centre for International Communication, is funded for the current phase (2006–2012) at $9,277,657. Is it too much to expect, for all of this effort over all this time, that some progress might be made in protecting some of our nearest relatives from extinction?

References Cited (available on request)