Spectating Son Tra Primates

This is called the 'kingdom of brown/red shanked doue langers' (pygathrix nemaeus nemaeus) because it is home to 300 doue langers (18 herds), which account for 30 percent of all doue langers currently available in Vietnam. Found in five colors, doue langer is the most beautiful primate species on the planet and is called the 'queen of langers'. Doue langer is an endangered species listed in the Vietnam Red Book, the 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

Part 1: Discovering the Kingdom of the Queen of Langers

Nguyen Manh Tien, the deputy head of the Forest Protection and Nature Conservation Division of the Da Nang Forest Management Department, said that langers have a habit of searching for food in the early morning and around three to four o'clock in the afternoon. He added that spring is their mating season.

We arrived at the Son Tra Nature Reserve at 6:30am when the Son Tra mountaintop was still wet in dew. All of us hoped to see with our own eyes herds of langers searching for food (on average, each herd consists of 6-24 langers).

Our first destination was near the Ba Tien Sa Temple - one of the places where herds of langers often come to search for food. Suddenly, Nguyen Manh Tien showed us a herd of primates from a distance. We held our breath in complete silence. Through binoculars, we saw a herd of yellow haired monkeys first and then several langers. The langers were beautiful but were soon lost from sight as they move quickly. The canopies of parashorea trees that are several hundred years old are a regular place for doue langers and other primate species to search for food.

The University for Natural Sciences, in association with the Da Nang Forest Management Department, has carried out a research project to learn about the behaviors of brown shanked doue langers in the Son Tra Nature Reserve. This project was funded by the Douc Langur Foundation (DLF). Research results show that doue langers eat 77 plant varieties, mostly buds, leafs, flowers and fruits. This kind of primate moves very quickly when they are on high branches of trees. When they see humans or other man-made things such as cars or trucks, doue langers will quickly hide themselves in the canopies of forest trees. However, when they are on the ground or low branches of trees, they move very slowly, and this is a favorable condition for hunters to trap doue langers.

Le Phuoc Bay, the head of the Hai Dang - Bai Nam Forest Management Station under the Forest Management Division of Son Tra and Ngu Hanh Son Districts, said, "In the past when tourism and transport activities were not as busy as at present, several herds of langers occasionally came to search for food under the canopies of trees near the coast, some of them even took food from tourists. But now that is very rare."

Le Phuoc Bay added that the Son Tra Peninsula has a 2,500ha plus special protection area in which nobody is allowed to hunt doue langers. However, one thing that concerns him is that the construction of many infrastructure and tourism facilities on the other part of the Son Tra Peninsula has more or less affected the habitat of this valuable and rare primate species.

The Son Tra Peninsula acts as a screen to protect the city of Da Nang against storms. It also provides fresh water to residents in the Son Tra District. It takes one only 20 minutes to go by car from the city center to the Son Tra Nature Reserve. It is a favorable geographical location and the biodiversity of the Son Tra Nature Reserve has attracted a growing number of visitors. However, this is also one of the risks for the habitat of a primate species that is called the 'queen of langers'.

VEN will provide further information about conservation activities as well as tourism development and infrastructure construction in the Son Tra Peninsula area, which affects the habitat of doue langers, in the following issue.