Endangered
Kipunji
Rungwecebus kipunji
Kipunji is an Old World monkey in the family Cercopithecidae (order Primates) — Rungwecebus kipunji, recorded as Endangered and tied to Tanzania.
Appearance
The Kipunji's relatively long pelage is light or medium brown with white on the end of the tail and the ventrum. The pelage close to the hands and feet tends to be a medium to dark brown. Its hands, feet, and face are all black.
Adult male kipunjis have a body length of 85–90 cm (33–35 in) and are estimated to weigh between 10 and 16 kg (22 and 35 lb).
It was independently described in December 2003 and July 2004, making it the first new African monkey species discovered since 1984.
Range and habitat
Around 1,800 individuals live in mountainside trees in Tanzania. A census published in 2022 found 59 groups in Livingstone Forest (within Kitulo National Park), Mount Rungwe Nature Reserve, and Madehani Village Forest. The forest at Rungwe is highly degraded, and fragmentation of the remaining forest threatens to split that population into three smaller populations.
Both Kilombero Nature Forest Reserve and Mount Rungwe Nature Reserves lack adequate management resources to counter these threats.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
In crisis
The Kipunji is classified as an endangered species on the IUCN Red List. It was included in the list of "The World's 25 Most Endangered Primates" in 2006 and 2008. To combat the endangered status of the Kipunji, efforts to protect the species are significantly enhanced when local commutes surrounding their habitat are aware of their significance and are actively engaged in protecting them.
Due to recent conservation efforts, as of 2022, the Kipunji population has increased by 65% and threats due to human activity have decreased by 81%. The Kipunji faces multiple threats, primarily stemming from human activities such as logging, charcoal making, illegal hunting, and unmanaged resource extraction have been commonplace in the Rungwe-Kitulo forests, leading to habitat fragmentation and degradation.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix II. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Kipunji is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Kipunji, Wikidata item Q155399. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
