{"id":1226,"date":"2013-06-04T11:18:17","date_gmt":"2013-06-04T01:18:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?p=1226"},"modified":"2013-05-28T13:33:27","modified_gmt":"2013-05-28T03:33:27","slug":"vogelnests-vietnam-mission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?p=1226","title":{"rendered":"Vogelnest’s Vietnam mission"},"content":{"rendered":"\"Vietnam2\"<\/a>Taronga senior veterinarian Larry Vogelnest is involved in an ambitious mission to save Vietnam\u2019s Cat Ba langurs from extinction.\r\n\r\nCat Ba langurs, also known as Golden-headed langurs, number about 50 in the wild and are exclusively found on the island of Cat Ba in Northern Vietnam.\r\n\r\nVogelnest applied for the task after reading an advertisement that was distributed worldwide on internet listservs.\r\n\r\n\u201cI thought it looked interesting and challenging, and ended up getting one of the two positions available, and in the end they asked me to choose the second vet, somebody that I was happy to work with,\u201d he said.\r\n\r\n\u201cI immediately thought of Michael Lynch from Melbourne Zoo because we have done a lot of work together, he has had experience in projects in southeast Asia, and was happy to be involved.\u201d\r\n\r\nVogelnest and Lynch previously worked together in 2006 on the import of Thai elephants to Taronga and Melbourne Zoos for a breeding program.\r\n\r\nCat Ba langurs have primarily been threatened by recreational hunting, and are generally not sought for food or medicinal products.\r\n\r\n\u201cI heard their bones are used to make monkey balm sometimes, but generally shooters pick them off high limestone cliffs they live on; they prefer to live on cliffs that face the water, so from a boat you look straight on to these big cliffs and they are easy targets,\u201d Vogelnest said.\r\n\r\nMales are most commonly shot as they are more inclined to reveal themselves in order to protect family groups.\r\n\r\nOther factors in the low numbers are disturbance of agriculture and aquaculture, development for tourism, as well as forest fires.\r\n\r\nThe majority of the population is on a small protected part of the island in the south east, and that population has stabilised over the last few years.\r\n\r\nThe decline has occurred since the 1960s, and at that point there was an estimated 2500 to 3000 langurs.\r\n\r\nAt the end of 2000 Munster Zoo and the Zoological Society for the Conservation of Species and Populations (ZGAP) formed a partnership with Vietnamese conservationists and the Cat Ba Langur Conservation Project was initiated.\r\n\r\n\u201cFortunately hunting has stopped since then and the conservation project has raised awareness of the plight of the animals,\u201d Vogelnest said.\r\n\r\n\u201cA number of locals are employed in a langur guard program, and the last known hunted animal was killed in 2004.\u201d\r\n\r\nThough the population has stabilised, there is also some fragmentation with two small female only groups living on the island\u2019s northwest.\r\n\r\nThe animals in the fragmented group Vogelnest worked with late last year were two females who became stranded 20 years ago after mangroves which connected the main island to a smaller one were cut back for fishing farming purposes.\r\n\r\nThere were many more in the group two decades ago, and they have gradually died out from shooting and natural causes.\r\n\r\nThe object of Vogelnest\u2019s last trip to Cat Ba was to capture and move those animals to the larger langur population.\r\n\r\n\u201cIt was an enormous challenge and a lot of preparation went in to it, including a very detailed master plan that encompassed the whole procedure,\u201d he said.\r\n\r\n\u201cThere was a lot of bureaucracy, government departments and health issues relating to the humans involved; we wanted to make sure nobody was carrying any nasty diseases and we also wanted to test the animals so we could get some base line health data.\r\n\u201cThere is no health data for this species at all, and nobody has looked at normal blood parameters or parasites.\u201d\r\n\r\nAfter developing protocols and finding laboratories that could run tests, the next priority was organising the darting of the langurs.\r\n\r\n\u201cSince it\u2019s difficult to take a pistol or a rifle in to Vietnam, we had to use something that was already there, so we went with a blow pipe,\u201d Vogelnest said.\r\n\r\nAnother considerable hurdle was catching the monkeys in rugged terrain on a large island.\r\n\r\nCat Ba langurs sleep in caves at night, and reliably use a rotation of a few locations. Fortunately one of their preferred caves was relatively accessible. A camera trap was set up in the cave to monitor their use of the cave.\r\n\r\n\u201cHowever the cave was 15 metres up a vertical cliff face, the floor area was 1 metre square, the entrance about 1.5 metres by 2 metres, and inside there was a vertical chimney that went up about 7 metres,\u201d Vogelnest said.\r\n\r\nPrior to Vogelnest arriving on the island, local conservationists and a climbing company set up the infrastructure to access the cave.\r\n\r\nWhen he went to inspect the cave in June, a 10 metre bamboo ladder and a 7 metre rope ladder had been acquired to access the cave.\r\n\r\n\u201cI\u2019m not so keen on heights, so it was pretty scary but I did get up there,\u201d Vogelnest said.\r\n\r\n\u201cObviously I was concerned about coming back and doing the job for real and insisted on having harnesses and safety ropes to prevent us potentially plummeting to our deaths.\u201d\r\n\r\nUpon returning in October the local crew had acquired the necessary safety equipment as well as a customised net made in Germany that fitted the opening of the cave and could be pulled shut once the langurs were inside.\r\n\r\nThe team then planned five days shifts for two people to survey the caves which were accessed by rowboat and a 20 minute walk up a valley to the cave.\r\n\r\n\u201cBy the fourth day of watching the cave we were getting a bit bored of watching nothing for hours, but at about 4.10pm the two langurs showed up, and thankfully were not bothered by our presence, because they were somewhat used to people being around after the ladder and rope were put in place (months before),\u201d Vogelnest said.\r\n\u201cAt about 5.40pm they both bolted in to the cave, and it was quite dark by this stage.\u00a0It was quite nerve-wracking to make the decision to close the net.”\r\n\r\nAfter pulling the rope to secure the animals, Vogelnest returned to base at the home of a local fish farmer (who is also a langur guard), and called his colleagues with the news.\r\n\r\nThe rest of the team arrived at 4am.\r\n\r\nVogelnest approached the darting with some trepidation as he was unsure of how the animals would react.\r\n\r\nOnce in the cave, the team discovered that both langurs were in a small cavern at the very top of the seven metre “chimney”.\r\n\r\n“I had to climb up the chimney and balance on a tiny ledge to dart them,” Vogelnest said.\r\n\r\n“Both the climb up the chimney and the darting were challenging, however in these circumstances the adrenalin kicks in and helps you get the job done.\u201d\r\n\r\nAfter the first langur was darted it was carefully lowered to the ground in a custom made basket where Lynch was ready to stabilise the anaesthetic and commence the examination and sample collection.\r\n\r\nVogelnest descended to assist before returning to the cave to repeat the procedure for the second animal.\r\n\r\n\u201cIt was a great relief once we’d secured the animals in pet packs ready for the trip to the release site, about a two and a half hour boat ride away,” he said.\r\n\r\n“A relief also to have accomplished the procedure without harming the two animals that represented per cent of the total population of this critically endangered species.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe langurs were fitted with UHF\/GPS collars, and tracking of their movements commenced immediately.\r\n\r\nSix days after the release it was noted the animals had been joined by a male and female from another group and were also observed mating.\r\n\r\nSome of the samples the team took remain in Hanoi in a cold storage freezer, and efforts are being made to complete permits to get them to Germany for DNA work and disease screening.\r\n\r\nVogelnest said he and Lynch are extremely keen to publish the results of their efforts because there is so little information about Cat Ba langurs.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe want to disseminate the information on the anaesthetic protocols, health data and the radio tracking data, so as soon as Michael and I get the information we\u2019re going to work on it, then head back to assist with translocating five other female langurs who are stranded on a peninsula due to human activities,\u201d he said.\r\n\r\n\u201cI have been receiving some correspondence about that part of the project, and it\u2019s looking increasingly likely we will get to it at some point during this year.\u201d\r\n\r\nIn addition to assisting the Cat Ba Langur, Vogelnest said the program has educated the local community about the worth of all wildlife on the island.\r\n\r\n\u201cThey have done a great job and it’s been nice to be involved in a project where there is a real potential for a tangible positive conservation outcome,\u201d he said.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe might actually see that this species will pick up and do okay after being critically endangered and regarded as one of the 25 most endangered primate species in the world.\u201d\r\nSAM WORRAD","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Taronga senior veterinarian Larry Vogelnest is involved in an ambitious mission to save Vietnam\u2019s Cat Ba langurs from extinction. Cat Ba langurs, also known as Golden-headed langurs, number about 50 in the wild and are exclusively found on the island of Cat Ba in Northern Vietnam. Vogelnest applied for the task after reading an advertisement […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[1071,1075,1072,1073,1070,1077,1076,1074,594],"class_list":["post-1226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","tag-ca-ba-langurs","tag-golden-headed-langurs","tag-langur","tag-langurs","tag-larry-vogelnest","tag-melbourne-zoo","tag-michael-lynch","tag-northern-vietnam","tag-vietnam"],"rise-blocks_total_comments":0,"rise-blocks_categories":[{"term_id":67,"name":"Features","slug":"features","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":68,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":63,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":67,"category_count":63,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Features","category_nicename":"features","category_parent":0}],"rise-blocks_excerpt":"Taronga senior veterinarian Larry Vogelnest is involved in an ambitious mission to save Vietnam\u2019s Cat Ba langurs from extinction. Cat Ba langurs, also known as Golden-headed langurs, number about 50 in the wild and are exclusively found on the island of Cat Ba in Northern Vietnam. Vogelnest applied for the task after reading an advertisement that was distributed worldwide on..","blog_post_layout_featured_media_urls":{"thumbnail":"","full":""},"categories_names":{"67":{"name":"Features","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?cat=67"}},"tags_names":{"1071":{"name":"Ca Ba langurs","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=ca-ba-langurs"},"1075":{"name":"Golden-headed langurs","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=golden-headed-langurs"},"1072":{"name":"langur","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=langur"},"1073":{"name":"langurs","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=langurs"},"1070":{"name":"Larry Vogelnest","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=larry-vogelnest"},"1077":{"name":"Melbourne Zoo","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=melbourne-zoo"},"1076":{"name":"Michael Lynch","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=michael-lynch"},"1074":{"name":"Northern Vietnam","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=northern-vietnam"},"594":{"name":"Vietnam","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=vietnam"}},"comments_number":"0","wpmagazine_modules_lite_featured_media_urls":{"thumbnail":"","cvmm-medium":"","cvmm-medium-plus":"","cvmm-portrait":"","cvmm-medium-square":"","cvmm-large":"","cvmm-small":"","full":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1226"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1243,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226\/revisions\/1243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}