Bhutan’s Kuenzang Dorji has been awarded a 2024 Whitley Award for his solutions to protect golden langur monkeys in Bhutan.
The endangered Gee’s golden langur monkey is traditionally viewed as a good omen in Bhutan, a small landlocked country in the East Himalayas. But economic expansion has led to significant habitat loss, forcing many of Bhutan’s 2,500 golden langurs into closer contact with humans.
As a result, langurs have started to forage on crops, including oranges and guava.
Many of Bhutan’s subsistence farmers live below the national poverty line and are unable to absorb the cost of losses inflicted by the langurs, and traditional methods to protect fields, such as scarecrows and electric fences, aren’t working.
Noticing the issue, Kuenzang Dorji, a wildlife biologist at the Royal Society for Protection of Nature in Bhutan, stepped in.
Dorji is developing practical solutions to help langurs and people in his 6,500 square kilometre project area, which includes the six remote districts in Bhutan where the golden langur is found.
A former national park warden, Dorji has devised a series of deterrents to stop the langurs from foraging and to protect the primates from other threats.
Dorji’s work has been recognised by the Whitley Fund for Nature (WFN), who have presented the wildlife biologist with a 2024 Whitley Award – an honour that recognises and celebrates grassroots conservation leaders.
Tackling the human-langur conflict
Dorji’s initiatives include use of heatmaps to identify conflict hotspots; strengthening community-based intervention with alternative deterrents; protecting the langurs by installing signs to reduce road kill incidences and installing animal repellent near high voltage power stations where the langurs are at risk of electrocution.
Under his plans, citizen scientists will learn how to collect primate data that supports long term monitoring.
The protection of crops is already yielding results and helping to boost the income of local farmers – protecting as much as 80 percent of their crops while freeing women and children from standing guard over the land.
Local people now acknowledge that while langurs may cause some harm, the ecosystem services they provide – through seed dispersal – far outweigh the damage they cause.
With his Whitley Award funding, Dorji plans to: halve the incidence of human-langur conflict; strengthen women’s farmers groups for increased crop protection; foster “conservation conscience” through outreach programmes at schools and villages which will reach 300 people; reduce electrocution and vehicle-langur collision, and nurture future primatologists through research fellow awards to 10 budding primatologists.
Find out more about Kuenzang Dorji and the 2024 Whitley Awards.
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