Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
male. Dynamite blasting during road construction between Zhemgang and the southern bor-
der had exposed a mineral lick where the sharpfeatured langurs could restore their electrolyte
balance, oblivious to their audience. I was able to sit so close to a troop of one of the rarest
monkeys on Earth that I practically could have reached over and brushed their golden fur.
Mincha's camera clicked away from the pickup's backseat as the langurs calmly posed for
one portrait after another. I could imagine how an ancestral bird similar to the tree creeper
could evolve into the beautiful nuthatch, the difference of a brighter blue on top and a warmer
orange on the belly. The more highly pigmented body plan of a beautiful nuthatch over that
of a more “plain” nuthatch seemed like an easy result of natural selection. But to go from the
sooty color of the gray leaf monkey to the brilliant pelage of the golden langur seemed like
the alchemy of evolution.
Our driver stopped abruptly at a turnout and pointed to two giant birds sailing like
hang gliders over the forest far below. Great hornbills! The birds traversed the entire four-
kilometer-long valley, and then moments later a third individual, perhaps an offspring, joined
the pair. Through my binoculars, the birds' giant goldenyellow casques, helmetlike protuber-
ances on the bill, and white and black markings stood out against the green blanket of forest.
Elsewhere in Asia hornbills are rare, heavily persecuted for their body parts by dealers in tra-
ditional medicines. In Bhutan they were still common. The Bhutanese tradition of preserving
and respecting life, rather than consuming every last individual of a species, seemed like a
natural antidote to the bushmeat trade so pervasive in many countries around the world.
The beautiful nuthatch remained elusive on this leg. But such is often the case in the search
for rarities. A pattern we first observed in the Foja Mountains of New Guinea and then saw
repeated in the Peruvian Amazon and now in Bhutan is that even in the most intact habitats,
many species will always be rare. Birding karma, or even compassion for wild creatures, was
not going to trump natural selection and make the beautiful nuthatch any more common or
easy to see. Why it has such a spotty distribution over its range is not yet known. Greater
clarity on the reasons for such rarity will come when devices such as the TrackTags placed
on jaguars become miniaturized to fit smaller rarities, or other new technologies are deve-
loped that allow us to gather the data needed to unlock the mysteries of uncommon creatures.
This is one of many topics in conservation biology in which theory needs to be bolstered by
innovative technologies. Only then will we better understand the more particular conserva-
tion needs of many rare species. In the meantime, providing adequate habitat and protection
is still the wisest preventive to extinction.
Unfortunately, Western explorers of rarity and expatriate conservation biologists in Bhutan
are on a fourteen-day visa, just like every other tourist. I could happily have spent another
