Education
An Invercargill academic is heading to West Africa next week to search for what may be the world's rarest mammal — a monkey that has not been seen or heard since the early 2000s.
Southern Institute of Technology Environmental Management Programme Manager Jordon Traill leaves on November 16 as part of an international research team looking for proof that Miss Waldron's red colobus monkey still exists. The expedition will take him to a remote rainforest on the border of Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana.
Traill says West Africa's Upper Guinea Forest is a global biodiversity hotspot, much like New Zealand. "The Upper Guinea Forest rainforest is home to lots of unusual and wonderful species like chimpanzees, forest elephants and pygmy hippos, many of them threatened by extinction as the forests are cleared."
Miss Waldron's red colobus has eluded scientists since the early 2000s, when it was last known to have been sighted. Some experts believe it may already be extinct, "which would mean it's the first primate species to go extinct in recent times," Traill says. Others believe that if a population of the monkey is alive, there is only one final place to search for it.
"There is a small forest on the border of Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana called Tanoe-Ehy."
The forest's difficulty is part of why the mystery has remained unsolved. "People struggle to move through it, while the monkeys can easily spot and avoid humans."
"With traditional survey methods, the monkeys may have heard people approaching and hidden from researchers."
Technology is changing that. Traill says researchers now have more tools for conservation and protection of nature. "Now surveying for threatened species can be done in many different ways and analysed with the help of AI and machine learning."
Audio-recording devices are placed in the forest over weeks, with AI tools used to detect the various noises the forest makes. "This advancement means we can continuously survey over a longer time without the impact of human presence possibly changing animal behaviour."
In 2024, the research team collected hundreds of hours of data in a preliminary study. With the help of AI tools, Traill was able to verify many of the sounds of the forest. "We heard lots of unusual noises, although none were a potential match for the monkey we are searching for, but from that information we detected areas of the forest with far higher biodiversity – not surprisingly the parts of the forest which were hardest to access."
This expedition will combine broadscale surveys to capture the whole forest for conservation purposes, alongside targeted surveys in those remote and difficult-to-reach locations.
The team is made up predominantly of researchers from the Ivory Coast, alongside researchers from Australia and Traill. The audio-recording survey is being led collaboratively by the three. The team will spend two months on-site, making weekly excursions into the forest.
Conditions are extreme. "Many parts of the forest are flooded so we will be sleeping in specialised rock-climbing tents which we will attach to trees in order to stay overnight as there is no dry ground."
All data is expected to be collected by the end of January, with Traill beginning the process of putting it through AI tools on his return.
The scope goes well beyond one species. "The expedition is about more than a single species. The forest is home to many rare species of mammals and birds. The recording devices can provide important information needed to guide future conservation efforts for all species in the forest."
"Whether we find Miss Waldron's red colobus monkey or not, the data will contribute to a much better understanding of one of Africa's most threatened ecosystems."
Traill freely admits he prefers to be "hiding in the forest, looking for monkeys rather than talking about it." Nearby Fiordland has served as a training ground. "Exploring Fiordland's dense forests has hopefully helped to prepare me for the impenetrable forests of the Ivory Coast."
At Southern Institute of Technology, the expedition has become a talking point with his students. "Some of the students at the school think I'm a bit unconventional and predict the next thing I'll be looking for are woolly mammoths and moa."
The project has opened up classroom discussions about research and uncertainty. "I think it's inspired a few students to think big and view the world where knowledge isn't completely fixed or concrete."
There are reasons to remain cautiously hopeful. A monkey lost to science was rediscovered in the Congo in 2012, and earlier this year a new species of monkey was discovered in the Congo Rainforest. Traill says people are often surprised by how much remains unknown about the natural world.
"I suspect somewhere in the tangle of branches of this hidden forest a small population of Miss Waldron's red colobus survives. But until we look, and listen, we simply do not know."