Sometimes their tails have been so badly injured and infected from hunter's snares that we have to cut them off to save their lives. This species has a complex stomach that maximizes the amount of nutrition from its diet of leaves and fruit. To help these beleaguered animals, he founded the Endangered Primate Rescue Center in 1993, outside Cuc Phuong National Park. With the approval of the Vietnamese government, help from volunteers, donations of equipment and the expertise of international wildlife organizations, Nadler and his team care for rare native primates. Injured primates get nursed back to health within a five-acre enclosure of jungle next to the country's oldest national park.
Care is taken to make sure everything is as natural as possible.
Instead of feeding the primates commercial monkey chow, for example, a dozen staff members harvest hundreds of pounds of leaves from the jungle each day. A Hedge Complete with veterinary clinic and quarantine station, the rescue center is the first of its kind in Vietnam. It also serves as a hedge against extinction. Established in 1960, Cuc Phuong National Park is home to an estimated 450 species of animals and 2,000 species of flora. The center doesn't have room to accept every monkey, so it focuses on the rarest and most endangered ones.