As biodiversity on Earth faces rapid decline, scientists are advocating for a new conservation approach: Save habitat for primates and protect countless other species along with them.
For long, conservation efforts and funding have prioritized umbrella species such as tigers and giant pandas on the basis that protecting the vast areas they depend on can help protect other wildlife that live in the same ecosystems.
A 2025 study found that monkeys, apes and other charismatic primates are potential “umbrella species” as well. They, too, often require large tracts of healthy habitat to survive. And by safeguarding the vast territories these animals need, countless other wildlife that share their ecosystem would also be protected, researchers say.
The researchers analyzed the habitats of 16 primate species across China’s biodiverse Yunnan province. They also examined the ranges of 601 species of threatened and endemic mammals, amphibians, birds and reptiles, as well as 4,010 species of seed plants found in Yunnan. Their analysis showed that if just 30% of Yunnan were designated a primate conservation priority area, 86% of the animals and 72% of the seed plants would have about a third of their habitats protected.
Protecting that area would also protect for more than half of the provinces’ annual carbon storage, the study found.
Conservation groups elsewhere, too, have advocated for protecting the habitats of charismatic primate species as a way to extend protection to several other species. For example, the nonprofit Rainforest Trust has sought to protect habitats of the critically endangered Grauer’s gorilla (Gorilla beringei graueri) in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which it says will then help safeguard habitats of more than 11,000 species. Similarly, according to the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation, protecting habitats of Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) could help protect an estimated 20,000 species across the rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra.
Primates “are charismatic which helps greatly with fundraising and advocacy and a role as flagships,” Tim Davenport, Africa director at the U.S.-based nonprofit Re:wild, who wasn’t involved in the study, told Mongabay by email. “But equally they have a significant role in forest habitats, both as prey for higher groups but as vital seed dispersers through frugivory. Significantly, the reverse is true, a forest in decline is often characterised by the loss of its primates first.”
“Protecting wild populations of large vertebrates is a great way to protect so much more,” Amy B. McEuen, author of the new book How to Think Like an Ecologist, who wasn’t involved in the study, told Mongabay in an email.
“The umbrella approach is very practical as a conservation tool,” Davenport said. “Its limitations are more a function of governance and human behaviour than the concept itself.”
Banner image: The black-and-white snub-nosed monkey (Rhinopithecus bieti) is found in Yunnan, China. Image by Rod Waddington via Flickr. (CC BY-SA 2.0).
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news.mongabay.com