China's and Burma's Forests and Canadian Forest Investments

The white-handed gibbon is extinct in China and this is one of the reasons why:

Since cutting natural forest has been illegal in China since 1998 (the Natural Forest Protection Ban), the country has embarked on a massive aforestation program. This is where the alleged Yunnan timber holdings of a certain Canadian-Chinese investment company come in. But “...the allocation of land for economic land concessions (including plantations) often raises questions about how local communities have been engaged, processes for free and prior informed consent, and long-term benefits for these communities.” EU Baseline Study 1, China: Overview of forest governance, markets and Trade. European Union, June 2011). Seems like a poor, or at least unethical, basis for investment to me.

China only produces about 70 m3/year from a forest base of some 8% of the country, and most of its domestic production now is from plantations of poplar, Chinese fir and Masson pine, mainly for plywood and paper. For furniture wood and lumber, it needs to import wood. The above-mentioned EU report discretely notes, “several of the countries which are major suppliers to China’s forest products industry ...[provide] illegally sourced wood materials” and “documentation of source of origin at district levels of Chinese timber still poses some difficulties ...”. In 2005, China imported more than 1.5 million cubic metres of Burmese timber worth an estimated US$350 million. Almost all of these imports were illegal; China closed the Burmese border to logs in 2006, resulting in huge inventories of logs at the border and putting many Chinese out of work (China Blocks Timber Imports From Burma [Myanmar]: www.illegal-logging.info). Ah, but then they put through highway 14 from Kunming to Mandalay. I have read, but can’t quote any stats, that illegal logging has since increased in Myanmar again, which is now nearly depleted of forest, with the logs flowing into Yunnan. So my guess is that is anyone wants to know where the missing forest land of this Canadian-Chinese forest company is, they might look towards Myanmar for the answer. And if some investors think Chinese forest companies, or Canadian ones with Chinese operations, have overstated their timber holdings, I can guess why.

My interest in this is the rare and endangered species that live in these forests. In the last couple of years, two species of gibbon have been extirpated from China and virtually all species that depend mature forest have either disappeared or are relegated to remnant “protected” forest patches where they are still hunted for meat and other products. Vietnam, Laos and Burma are huge sources of trade in illegally harvested or captured species, and are (especially Vietnam) major conduits for animals sources in other SE Asian countries, China is the main market, and Yunnan is the main port of entry. The disappearance of forests and native wildlife from Yunnan and neighbouring countries should be reason enough for anyone not to invest in companies like this.

Biogeography of Gibbons

I've been struggling on taxonomy of langurs and gibbons lately: langurs because I have an accepted paper "in press" that needs a little tweaking and the tweaks go back to early in the 19th Century; and because the gibbon monograph that I'm starting has taxonomic problems pre-dating Linnaeus 1771.

But the good news is that so many ancient manuscripts are finding their way on to the Internet that I can actually sit here in Coquitlam and read books from that era. And that they're often in French, Dutch, German or Latin doesn't matter so much, because the names of the authors and the journals are all the same, and the Latin names of the critters is still Latin. Takes time, though.

Last night I had an epiphany: I noticed that the 3 Indochinese species of gibbons are separated by big rivers: crested gibbons (Nomascus spp.) east of the Mekong, Lar-type gibbons (Hylobates spp.) between the Mekong and the Salween system, and Hoolock gibbons (Hoolock hoolock) west of there, between the Salween River and the Irrawaddy River. It's because gibbons can't swim, and these big rivers have been stable for long enough for these genera to evolve--that's back to the Pliocene, between 2 and 5 million years.

I'm not the first to notice that large rivers separate gibbon species, nor the first to notice that the biggest rivers separate the genera. But it was fun to figure it out for myself.

More on Gibbons

My previous posts, “Monkeying Around in Vietnam” and “Birding in Malaysia Turns Up Siamangs” mentioned several gibbon species that I saw there. These “lesser apes” are in the same superfamily as Humans, the Hominoidea, and branched off from our family line about 16 million years ago (MYA). There are 12-15 species (depending on the authority) in four genera. 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.” Gibbons live in small monogamous families composed of a mated pair and offspring and sometimes others that are assumed to be uncles and aunts, or possibly grandparents. Each family defends its territory from other families, and families in adjacent territories may meet at the boundary and yell at each other. This was the commotion that I heard on Fraser's Hill in Malaysia.
In all species, the mated pairs sing duets in which each gender's song is distinct from the other (Geissmann 2000, 2002). Each species sings a different, distinct duet. A pair's duet elicits duet calls from any other families that are within hearing.
Like humans, their monogamy is “dynamic,” with extra-pair copulations a regular, if infrequent, occurrence in all studied species (Palombit 1994a; Palombit 1994b; Rechard 1995; Sommer and Reichard 2000). Also like us, the males of mated pairs care for infants, at least in siamangs and hoolocks (Lappan 2008), and this may be a trait of the whole family. I have often wondered why human behavioural researchers and commentators draw inferences about our own behaviour from that of baboons (not even hominoids) and chimpanzees instead of gibbons that at least have a similar mating system.
For brevity, references are omitted here; please let me know if you would like them.