Delacour‘s Langur Project
Delacour‘s Langur Project
The project to save and protect Delacour’s langurs in Vietnam is led by German primatologist and long-time conservationist Tilo Nadler in cooperation with local communities, Vietnamese authorities, international zoos, and non-profit organizations such as Fauna & Flora International and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The goal of the project is to save the small surviving populations of critically endangered Vietnamese primates from extinction by protecting their environment, preventing poaching, and connecting these fragmented populations with bio-corridors.
Threats to langurs
Delacour’s langur (Trachypithecus delacouri) is found only in Vietnam and is a critically endangered species. It was even included among the 25 most endangered primates in the world. These langurs were brought to the brink of extinction due to habitat loss and hunting for traditional medicine in the last decades of the 20th century. The only place where a viable population of Delacour’s langur still exists in a safe environment is the Van Long Nature Reserve in North Vietnam’s Ninh Binh Province. In 1993, a small population of langurs numbering only around 50 individuals was discovered at this location. However, small island-like populations have also been discovered in the surrounding areas – these would need to be connected by bio-corridors to ensure genetic variability and thus the viability of the Delacour’s langur population.
Activities of the Delacour’s Langur Project
In 2001, thanks to the efforts of this project, the Van Long area was declared a protected area, and since then the area has been systematically protected from poaching, in which the local communities were also involved. A conservation unit consisting of 30 local residents has been formed to protect the area from destructive human activities and illegal hunting. As a result, the local langur population has quadrupled to around 200 individuals over the past 19 years. In addition, thanks to successful conservation and benefits for local communities, the reserve was added to the so-called Green List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in 2020, as the first ever nature reserve in Vietnam. However, efforts are now underway to officially declare the adjacent area with Delacour’s langurs as a protected area, so that the insular populations can be connected into a larger and more viable one. For this purpose, as part of the project, field monitoring is being carried out, aiming to map the biodiversity of these locations and the details of the occurrence of Delacour’s langurs. These findings will serve as a basis for the responsible Vietnamese authorities.
You can learn more at https://www.three-monkeys.org/.
How Ostrava Zoo helps
Since 2019, the Ostrava Zoo has been supporting the Delacour’s langur conservation project in several ways. With the financial support of the Ostrava Zoo, seven large-format educational panels about the protection of the Van Long Reserve and the Delacour’s langurs were designed, produced and placed around the reserve. As part of field research on the langur population, the Ostrava Zoo also financially supported the training of 30 rangers in the use of “smart” technologies with the aim of training forest rangers from local communities in the use of a special mobile application, thanks to which they can record, evaluate and subsequently improve the effectiveness of the enforcement of laws for the protection of wild animals and nature conservation itself in this area. In 2020, in cooperation with the Asian Species Action Partnership (ASAP), the Ostrava Zoo received funds for activities of this project to expand the Van Long reserve with another valuable habitat in the neighbouring Hoa Binh province and an area of approximately 1,000 ha. In addition, from 2022, the Ostrava Zoo supports the project through the “3 CZK for Wildlife” program.
