Southwest China's Guizhou Province has become the world's largest habitat for the endangered black leaf monkeys, with more than 1,000.

Sources from the Guizhou provincial forestry department said there are only some 2,000 black leaf monkeys in the world, with nearly half living in Guizhou.

According to Li Mingjing, an official with the department, a total of 736 black leaf monkeys were spotted in the state-level Mayang River Nature Reserve in the Tujia ethnic autonomous county of Yanhe, which is located in northeastern Guizhou.

The Mayang River nature reserve now is the largest home to black leaf monkeys in China. Covering an area of more than 31,100 hectares, the nature reserve is home to 266 species of wildlife such as black bears, zibets and condors, and home to 478 varieties of vascular bundle plants.

Li said the provincial government and forestry departments in Guizhou have taken rigid measures to cope with the poaching of wildlife and have launched massive afforestation projects to improve the living environment of the wildlife in recent years. Guizhou has eight nature reserves for black leaf monkeys.

Black leaf monkeys, first discovered in south China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region in 1889, are distributed mainly in Guizhou and Guangxi areas and the northern part of Vietnam.

There are believed to be approximately 200 black leaf monkeys in Vietnam and anywhere from 300 to 400 in Guangxi autonomous region.

(Xinhua News Agency February 22, 2005)