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The First in Africa in More Than 20 Years
Carolyn Ehardt had a secret, or at least she thought she did.
The University of Georgia primatologist sat across the table from fellow researchers Graeme Patterson and Tim Davenport of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) on a balmy October evening last year and wondered whether to divulge her tale. A few months earlier, her research team discovered a new species of mangabey, a longhaired monkey with a distinctive honk-bark vocalization, in the Udzungwa Mountains of Tanzania.
The idea that such a large mammal was still unknown in the 21st century would be incredible, especially to the two men sipping Kilimanjaro beer with her that night at the Oyster Bay Hotel in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s capital. Now was the time to share her news, Ehardt decided. After all, WCS helped fund her project and would welcome her success. So she swore the men to secrecy and told them what happened in the Ndundulu Forest.
``As I began to describe the new mangabey’s characteristics, glancing ever more often and intensively at Tim, it became clear that he was increasingly reacting with facial expressions that signaled, what appeared to me, to be something akin to amazement coupled with seeming despair,” Ehardt wrote in an e-mail describing the encounter.
When she noted a particularly telling feature – the lower third to half of the new species’ tail is white – Davenport leaned back in his chair, shook his head and then stared at Ehardt.
``It’s not just in the Udzungwas,” she recalled him finally saying. ``It’s in the Southern Highlands.”
Davenport had made his own startling discovery the previous year, identifying the distinctive mangabey 220 miles (350 kilometers) from where Ehardt’s team made its find.
The dual, independent discoveries are the first of a new primate in Africa in more than 20 years. The journal Science published the report co-authored by Ehardt, Davenport, a field assistant on Ehardt’s project named Trevor Jones, and Thomas Butynski of Conservation International (CI) on May 20.
Named the highland mangabey (Lophocebus kipunji), the monkey is just under a meter tall (about three feet) long with a tail of similar length. It has long brown fur, black skin, an erect crest of hair on its head, elongated cheek whiskers, and the unusual call described as a “honk-bark” by the authors. Kipunji is the name that hunters in the Southern Highlands used to describe a shy monkey in the area.
The highland mangabey is considered critically endangered, with an estimated total population of between 500 and 1,000 and likely occupying less than 100 square kilometers (40 square miles) of forest in the two sites.
Davenport’s team first spotted it in the Southern Highlands forests on the flanks of Mt. Rungwe and in the adjoining Kitulo National Park. It was months later when Ehardt’s team made its discovery in Ndundulu Forest Reserve of the Udzungwa Mountains.
``A large, striking monkey has been hidden right under our noses in a country of considerable wildlife research over the last century,” noted CI President Russell A. Mittermeier, who chairs the Primate Specialist Group of The World Conservation Union’s Species Survival Commission (IUCN-SSC).
Both Davenport and Ehardt hope the discovery will increase research and conservation efforts in the Southern Highlands and Udzungwa Mountains. Ehardt and Butynski have been seeking the extension of the Udzungwa Mountains National Park to include the surrounding forest reserves.
``It’s once in a lifetime to be involved in the discovery of a large mammal,” Butynski said, and Ehardt described a similar feeling after she and Davenport realized what happened.
``I can honestly say that both Tim and I were in awe, simply staring at one another in complete, total, silent, mind-jarring mutual amazement at what had just transpired during this meeting …” she wrote. “Nothing could have been more unreal – both the fact that we apparently had co-discovered the first new monkey species to be found in Africa in 20 years, unbeknownst to one another until that very moment; and that we had discovered our mutual discoveries in this way, sitting at a table enjoying the cool Tanzanian evening breezes, at a casual meeting that had been so utterly serendipitous. …
“Unforgettable it remains, and always will for me.”
Lindaland
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