IWN News

In Bongaigaon, a Village Plants a Future for the Golden Langur

Gee's Golden Lutung (Trachypithecus geei). Photograph by kalyanvarma. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

IWN Report — Tuesday, 18 August 2026

Villagers in Amtola, a small settlement on the edge of the Bamungaon Hills in Assam’s Bongaigaon district, planted more than 500 native saplings on August 5. The intended beneficiary is a primate that lives nowhere else on the planet outside a narrow strip of land straddling the Assam–Bhutan border: the golden langur.

The plantation drive was organised by the Wildlife Trust of India, working with the Assam Forest Department and supported by the Royal Enfield Social Mission. Bhupen Ray, MLA for the Abhayapuri constituency, attended as chief guest, alongside Khanindra Kalita, Divisional Forest Officer for the Aie Valley Division, and Forest Ranger Shankar Ray. Local stakeholders and village leaders from Amtola turned out too.

Narrow Range

The golden langur (Trachypithecus geei) is confined to forests wedged between the Manas and Sankosh rivers, with the Brahmaputra to the south and the Indo-Bhutan foothills to the north. According to the IUCN Red List, the species is Endangered, with fewer than 2,500 mature individuals left in the wild worldwide — under 1,500 of them in India, the remainder across the border in Bhutan. The global population has fallen by more than half over the past three generations, the assessment finds, driven largely by the loss and fragmentation of the forest patches the langurs depend on.

Older Campaign

The Bamungaon Hills sit within the wider landscape of the Golden Langur Conservation Project, a community-led effort that Wildlife Trust of India traces back to 1998, when it began working with local forest committees and self-help groups around Manas National Park to curb logging and poaching. That project helped establish village-run Forest Protection Forces across several reserve forests in the region, Bamungaon among them.

The 5 August plantation falls under WTI’s Greater Manas Recovery Project, which extends conservation work beyond the boundaries of Manas National Park into the wider, interconnected forest landscape around it. The stated aim is to improve habitat connectivity and forest cover for the langurs around Amtola, giving the animals more room to move between fragments of forest without crossing open, human-dominated ground.

Sources: Wildlife Trust of India · IUCN Red List · Wildlife Trust of India (Golden Langur Conservation Project background)