Hainan gibbon bounce back from brink of extinction

Fahad Redha

February 17, 2026
3 min read

Hainan gibbon bounce back from brink of extinction

The Hainan gibbon, a critically endangered primate, has bounced back from the brink of extinction. In 2003, the population of the monkey, found on the Hainan islands in the South China Sea, had fallen to around a dozen individuals.

But the population has since seen a “mysterious” rebound, with the numbers nearly tripling since, according to a paper published in Science Advances.

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“In the past two decades, though, the primates have steadily regained ground,” the authors of the study wrote. Now, it is estimated that the number of the Hainan gibbon on the island is around 42 individuals, despite a lack of genetic diversity.

Given this, a high level of inbreeding and a potential for a large number of harmful mutations are expected, the researchers say. But an analysis of data from 18 wild gibbons and four specimens from museums seems to suggest the opposite, they write in the paper. The modern Hainan gibbon population, they said, shows high local genomic recombination, low genetic load, and beneficial functional variations.

This, they believe is because the species may have experienced a population expansion after a genetic bottleneck, a period of population decline resulting in a fall in genetic diversity during the Last Glacial Maximum, between 20,000 and 26,000 years ago. In the aftermath, the animals expanded, leading to remixing of two separate genetic lineages, they said, adding that it supported the monkey’s health, allowing their population to bounce back.

In the 1950s, the Hainan gibbon numbered around 2,000 on the island, but deforestation and hunting saw that fall, according to the Zoological Society of London (ZSL). The last surviving population lives in just a single forest patch within the Bawangling National Nature Reserve. One family of gibbons was seen living outside the conservation park in 2019 and is said to have been thriving thanks to conservation efforts.

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