Primatologists have suggested rerouting a 1.65-km-long railway track that has divided an eastern Assam sanctuary dedicated to the western hoolock gibbon (Hoolock hoolock) into two unequal parts.
- Their report follows that of the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) on designing an artificial canopy bridge to facilitate the movement of the hoolock gibbons across the broad-gauge line within the Hollongapar Gibbon Sanctuary.
- Housing about 125 hoolock gibbons (India’s only ape) organised in more than two dozen groups, the sanctuary in the Jorhat district covers 21 sq. km.
- The sanctuary also shelters six other primate species — the Assamese macaque, the Bengal slow loris, the capped langur, the northern pig-tailed macaque, the rhesus macaque, and the stump-tailed macaque.
- The western hoolock gibbon inhabits the jungles with tall trees on the southern bank of the Brahmaputra (Assam)-Dibang (Arunachal Pradesh) river system.
- Like the other 19 gibbon species in the world, it is marked as endangered due to habitat loss and habitat fragmentation.
- Gibbons are exclusively arboreal animals inhabiting the forest’s upper canopy.
- Gibbon families on both sides of the railway track have thus been effectively isolated from each other, which compromises their population’s genetic variability and further endangers their already threatened survival in the sanctuary.
- An artificial canopy bridge is a conservation initiative for facilitating the movement of arboreal animals across life-threatening man-made structures or projects.
