“Until the 1980s people roamed the mountains of Shennongjia in central China hunting monkeys for their meat and fur.

Poor farmers were still clearing vast areas of trees, and as their environment collapsed around them, so did the local population of golden snubbed-nosed monkeys, dropping below 500 in the wild.

This was the situation when new graduate Yang Jingyuan arrived in 1991, still in his early 20s…

Old photos from the early days of Prof Yang’s team show bare hills with tree cover of around 60% but when we put up a drone, from the top of a mountain, we could see that the reports of tree coverage currently at around 96% appear to be accurate…

the 500 monkeys figure has now become more than 1,600 and they are hoping that this will pass 2,000 within 10 years.”

From BBC.