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China Digitizing Protection Efforts for Endangered Wild Animals

Posted on: Thursday, 7 July 2005, 09:00 CDT

China digitizing protection efforts for endangered wild animals

KUNMING, July 6 (Xinhua) -- China's endangered black snub-nose monkeys will have a new gift -- a digital chaplet which can be used to track their activities.

The digitized protection program, jointly sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Nature Conservancy of the United States, is being implemented at Mount Laojun in Lijiang Naxi Autonomous County of Yunnan.

Under the program, several wild black snub-nosed monkeys will be collared with GPS (global positioning system) devices, which will emit digital signals for scientists to receive through wireless Internet surfing. The scientists will locate the monkeys and analyze the size of the groups of the endangered species with the data received.

This is the first time that China uses a high-tech approach to help with ecological research and the conservation of rare wild animals.

With a population of less than 1,500, wild black snub-nose monkeys reside in primeval forests, high mountains and deep canyons in Yunnan Province and Tibet Autonomous Region of southwest China.

It is not easy for people to approach and directly observe the hyper-sensitive rare monkeys. And their habitats add to the difficulty.

"Traditional observation means made it difficult to collect enough information of living habits of the monkeys and to take effective measures to protect them accordingly," said Long Yongcheng, a zoologist specializing in research on black snub-nosed monkeys.

In a related development, black-necked cranes, another endangered species under China's first-class protection exertion, have been also put under a GPS program in Yunnan Province, carrying cell- phone-sized satellite signal emitters.

Source: Xinhua News Agency - CEIS

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