It’s over 50 years since the last confirmed sighting of Bouvier’s red colobus monkey, Procolobus pennantii bouvieri. Now, two primatologists have captured the first ever photograph of a monkey so rare that many scientists believed it was extinct. The picture clearly shows a mother and infant.
This is a species that needs all the help it can get. Red colobus monkeys (there are several species) often don’t move away from humans but tend to hang around and look down at them from the trees. This makes them a sitting target wherever hunters are active. They are highly threatened by the growing demand for bushmeat in the region, a trade that also threatens larger primates such as gorillas and chimpanzees.
Independent researchers Lieven Devreese and Gaël Elie Gnondo Gobolo found their elusive monkey in the Ntokou-Pikounda National Park, a 1,765-square-mile protected area created on advice from Wildlife Conversation Society in 2013 to safeguard gorillas, chimpanzees, elephants, and other species. It was a tough journey through swamp forest and deep mud.
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