What is the best way to raise awareness about the Hainan gibbon?

What is the best way to raise awareness
about the Hainan gibbon?

By Junfei Qian & Heidi Ma, 14th April 2021

There are many ways to carry out conservation awareness-raising campaigns, whether by
conducting local outreach activities, constructing permanent billboards, painting murals or
distributing posters and other materials. Ideally, we would be able to use all these methods to help
to raise awareness about the species we want to conserve. But in reality, financial constraints limit
the resources we have available for this type of work. With all this in mind, we wondered: what is
the most effective way to carry out a conservation awareness-raising campaign?

We investigated this question on Hainan Island, China’s southernmost province. Hainan is now the
only remaining habitat for the Hainan gibbon Nomascus hainanus, an ape that has received
increasing conservation attention over the past decade. To date, only a remnant population of
approximately 30 individuals survives, in Bawangling National Nature Reserve, making this species
the world’s rarest primate.

Two female Hainan gibbons and their young. Photo: Hui Liu, Hainan Univeristy and Bawangling National Nature
Reserve Management Office
Numerous villages lie close to the reserve boundary, and local people utilize resources collected

inside the protected area. As part of a wider conservation programme, public awareness-raising
activities have been conducted since the early 2000s to promote awareness of the reserve and
gibbon conservation, as well as offer environmental education. The reserve management office has
worked with local and international NGOs to organize outreach sessions in villages and schools, to
provide information about the status of the gibbon and conservation legislation, to construct
permanent billboards displaying gibbon-related information and images, and paint murals and
distribute posters and other materials showing gibbons and another local biodiversity. Ongoing
educational activities have been identified as a priority action to support Hainan gibbon
conservation.

We evaluated the outcome of previous conservation awareness-raising campaigns to help us
understand better the current knowledge gap of Hainan gibbon conservation—local perceptions of
its population size, threats, and protection status, and investigated factors that affected these
perceptions.

As a native Mandarin speaker, Junfei carried out 207 interviews in May–June 2018 in 25 villages
around Bawangling National Nature Reserve using a standard anonymous questionnaire that took
45 minutes to complete. Junfei conducted interviews on her own, but she always felt comfortable
and warmly welcomed by local people. Most of the time when people were asked to participate in
an interview, they would first give her a chair to sit by them, sometimes offering a cup of tea. Junfei
said it just felt like visiting friends in the rural area. It was an unforgettable experience which to
date she still draws inspiration and happiness from.

Left: Junfei conducting interviews with local people while they harvest mangoes. Right: A woman showing Junfei
some locally collected grass fibres used for making brooms.

What is the most effective way to carry out a conservation awareness-raising campaign that is
suitable for the local context? From our results, we found that many respondents knew about the
existence, population size, conservation status, and threats to gibbons from past awareness-raising
activities, with village outreach sessions and billboards widely identified as key sources of
information.

Although educational activities have certainly improved awareness of gibbons and their
conservation needs in relative terms, overall levels of knowledge remain low in many important
areas. Ongoing improvement of local awareness is still needed, in particular, around topics such as

gibbon conservation status, extinction risk, and the purpose of the nature reserve.

Our research on awareness among local communities forms part of the wider conservation
programme of the Zoological Society of London’s Hainan Gibbon Project. Since the project began in
2010, we have been using interdisciplinary methods to build a robust evidence base, contributing
science-based conservation recommendations to Bawangling National Nature Reserve. Although we
previously focused on gibbon ecology, our research has now expanded into the human dimensions
of the reserve–community landscape mosaic. In addition to awareness, we have also explored local
knowledge and perceptions of other native species, attitudes towards resource use, and the
cultural significance of wildlife such as gibbon-related folklore and associated values.

Left: Travelling to villages around Bawangling National Nature Reserve. Photo: Heidi Ma. Right: A typical village
setting Photo: Junfei Qian.

In early 2020, the reserve became part of the newly established Hainan Tropical Rainforest
National Park, one of the 10 parks of its kind in China. Ethically engaging with local communities,
by way of incorporating their views into management decisions and distributing concrete benefits
derived from conservation, will be a vital component of fair and effective governance. Increasing
awareness alone will not be sufficient for simultaneously achieving conservation goals and
supporting human well-being.

Encouragingly, there is a growing body of conservation research in China. Our study of Indigenous
communities in Hainan contributes to the understanding of human–wildlife dynamics, which is of
particular importance as environmental management practices and policies are rapidly evolving in
China. We especially hope that more voices of local people living alongside biodiversity will be
heard at the upcoming UN CoP15 to the Convention on Biological Diversity.

The open access article Assessing the effectiveness of public awareness-raising initiatives for the
Hainan gibbon Nomascus hainanus is available in Oryx—The International Journal of Conservation.

Junfei Qian & Heidi Ma
Junfei (钱俊霏) is an alumnus of the MSc in Conservation Science at Imperial College
London. She now works at UNESCO Beijing Office with the Man and Biosphere
Programme, International Hydrological Programme in Geosciences and Disaster Risk
Reduction in East Asian countries, on topics related to sustainable development of local
communities, capacity-building of local villagers and reserve managers, and
empowering youth in Biosphere Reserves.

Heidi is a PhD student at Royal Holloway University of London and project coordinator at
the Zoological Society of London’s Institute of Zoology. She works with Chinese and
international collaborators in academia, government, and grassroots organizations to
conserve the Hainan gibbon and other threatened species. Her research focuses on the
perceptions of native wildlife and conservation issues among local communities living
around Hainan’s protected areas.