On September 6, at the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the National Scientific Committee on Endangered Species and the 2021 annual work conference, the "Assessment Report on the Endangered Status of Primates in China 2022" was released. The report shows that in the past few decades, the white-palmed gibbon and the northern white-cheeked gibbon distributed in China have not been monitored in the wild, meeting the criteria for extinction in the wild. Wild extinction is a conservation status that is classified when a species or its subspecies, whose known individuals survive only in captivity, or when their populations need to be wildly released before they can return to their historically existing sites.
Li Baoguo, a professor at Northwestern University, the leader of the assessment expert group, said that primates around the world are facing a serious extinction crisis, with more than 60% of animals listed as vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered, and 75% of species with declining populations. Among the 28 extant primate species in China, 80% are threatened, and the population size of 15-18 species is less than 3,000, at present, almost all primates in China inhabit scattered landscapes, habitat distribution is in an "island" state, and the opportunities for population exchange or gene exchange are severely limited. After the White Sturgeon and Dugong, two species of gibbons in China went extinct in the wild_Green Government Office_The Paper
