Fan Peng-Fei of China’s Dali University was worried the first time he entered the forest habitat of the critically endangered cao vit gibbon (Nomascus nasutus). The isolated forest, skirting the China–Vietnam border, had been heavily degraded by years of agricultural development, firewood collection and charcoal production. What little forest remained provided poor habitat for the [...]

Primates that spend their entire lives in trees tend not to survive after those trees are cut down. Sadly, that’s what’s happening in northeast India, where the forest habitats for one of the world’s rarest apes are rapidly disappearing. The western hoolock gibbon (Hoolock hoolock) has lost an estimated 90 percent of its population over [...]

The world’s final 23 Hainan black-crested gibbons (Nomascus hainanus) are making what may be their last stand in China, where their jungle habitat is being wiped out at a rate of 200,000 square meters a day, according to a new report from Greenpeace International. Hainan gibbons are the world’s rarest primates. Sixty years ago they [...]

Crested gibbons are the world’s most endangered primates, and the world needs to take action immediately if we are to save these lesser apes from extinction, according to scientists who spoke last week at the International Primatological Society Congress in Kyoto, Japan. There are just seven species of crested gibbon, all of which are endangered. [...]