Special postage stamps on Viet Nam’s rare primates were launched in Ha Noi on August 11 as a call for the community’s joint effort to save the endangered species from extinction.

A gray-shanked douc langur (Source: VNA)

The four new stamp and one block designs, created by painter Do Lenh Tuan from the Viet Nam  Post Corporation, depicts five indigenous primate species of Viet Nam  that are in danger of extinction.

They are the Vooc Cat Ba (white-headed langur or Trachypithecus poliocephalus), Vooc mong trang (Delacour's langur or Trachypithecus delacouri), Vooc mui hech (Tonkin snub-nosed monkey or Rhinopithecus avunculus), Cha va chan xam (gray-shanked douc langur or Pygathrix cinerea), and Vuon den tuyen Dong Bac (Eastern black crested gibbon or Nomascus nasutus).

The first four species were also featured on stamps launched in 2002. The same year also saw the re-discovery of the Vuon den tuyen Dong Bac (Eastern black crested gibbon or Nomascus nasutus), one of the rarest and most endangered primate species in the world.

As of present, there have been 20 primate species depicted on 31 stamp and one block designs in Viet Nam.

Viet Nam is home to 26 primate species, five of them are listed among the world’s 25 most endangered primate species.

The publication of the stamps was in response to the 25th Congress of the International Primatological Society, which is taking place in Viet Nam from August 11 – 16.

Also on this occasion, the second volume of the “Primates in Fragments” book was introduced to Vietnamese readers on August 10.