Zanzibar Red Colobus

Hello everyone, I will be writing about the Zanzibar red colobus
monkey. This is an endangered old world monkey that lives exclusively in Zanzibar on the island of Unguja. Fortunately for me, I had the privilege of going to Jozani National Park in Zanzibar today, by taking advantage of the time off from the Embassy due to Independence Day. The park is where the majority of these monkeys reside and is roughly an hour and a half inland from Ng'ambo (Stone Town). As we drove my colleague and myself were able to understand, even with our limited Kiswahili, from our driver that the clearcut farmland we were passing was once forest and the natural habitat of the Zanzibar red colobus (ZRC) and now many of the monkeys have habituated to humans and live on the outskirts of these farms. This has corresponded with the growth in the human population on the island and increased tourism interest, something that provided me with a pang of guilt. The first conservation effort I noticed was rope ladders that ran between trees over the road as we neared the park. I had seen this before in Southeast Asia but was happy to see it implemented here. This was to allow the monkeys to traverse across the road without risking death by car, which is one of the leading killers of the ZRC according to my guide.

The leading figures I found online were around 2000 individuals. However, our guide said that their best estimates were roughly 3500 females, 900 males, and 600 infants resulting in nearly 5000 ZRC monkies. This is still, however, an endangered species. Upon arrival, I was surprised by the sheer number of ZRC monkies I was able to see. They were clearly not afraid of humans as they seemed to not even mind our presence. I met and followed a researcher as she documented the population and presence of the ZRC in areas and found a clearing where the monkies seemed to be congregating. There must have been a dozen around me allowing me even to take the shot above from nearly 2 feet away. I could have touched them if that were not wholly inappropriate considering the circumstances. As you can hopefully see to the right of this paragraph is a mother with her infant. According to the researcher there the rate of childbirth leading to mature ZRC's are increasing, however, there are still many factors that are causing early deaths for these beautiful creatures. These include being struck by cars, deforestation, pollution, hunting, and killing them as nuisances. Thankfully it is relatively uncommon for these monkies to be culled for bushmeat as they are known locally to be an unfit to eat an animal that is unclean or dirty as I understand. Unfortunately, the population was seriously reduced by farmers who were killing them, as the ZRC was known to eat and damage their crops. This hunting has seriously decreased in recent years as the ZRC is protected by the government and local conservation groups who have spread awareness of the importance of this species.

As you can see the color of the back is an eponym for this species and colobus refers to the fact that either this species is smaller, usually due to a species habitation on an island or that they have only four digits on its hands with the omission of an opposable thumb. (the ZRC does have five toes on each foot though). The population is small, yet it appears to be growing. The tourism, while problematic in general on the island does provide a major source of the conservation funding, and their ability to bring researchers and film crews as well as normal tourists makes them a very valuable asset to the island and I hope will ensure their long term survival.

I could write endlessly about the ZRC, but as I have work in the morning and it is past 11:00 PM for me I will stop here. Also, I had to wake up at 6:30 to make the trip and just arrived back into Dar es Salaam late this night. Thank you if you managed to read through this.

If you are interested further please read the mongabay article below which sites the population number I was told today.

https://news.mongabay.com/2019/05/red-colobus-conservation-in-zanzibar-a-cautiously-optimistic-tale/

https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/39992/92630131#population