ASSAM'S PRIDE

A rare primate is losing its only home

- NARAYAN SHARMA AND HIMANGSHU KALITA

Every year when the heavy rains, heat and high humidity of the monsoon months cease, and give way to that dry, cool weather of the winter for which northern India is so famous, my thoughts turn to the clear, fast-flowing rapids of the Sankosh and Manas with their backdrop of towering, thickly forested foothills...I can think of no part of the world which can boast of greater scenic enchantment combined with rich and varied wild lite than this strip of Himalayan foothills... And I cannot think of a more engaging and more wonderful wild creature than the “newly-discovered” golden langur, as it feeds, plays and leaps from branch to branch in the tree tops, making the silvery-green leaves quiver against an azure sky.” These words are taken from the 1964 book The Wild Life of India by British naturalist and tea planter Edward Pritchard Gee, credited with the identification of a cream-coloured Old World primate endemic only to Assam and Bhutan. Named Gee’s golden langur after the naturalist, the monkey remains one of the rarest and most threatened primates globally.