With three-decades of environment protection, the population of endangered black snub-nosed monkeys in a natural reserve in southwest China's Yunnan Province has been trippled.

Latest figures show that the monkeys living in Baima Snow Mountain Nature Reserve in Yunnan has reached 1,500.

But the number was only around 500 when the reserve was established in 1983.

And with the population growth, habitat of the monkeys also extended about 40 km south.

China now has about 3,000 black snub-nosed monkeys with most of them living in mountainous forests in Yunnan and neighboring Tibet Autonomous Region.

The species was close to extinction in 1980s as local hunters poached them for food or their fur.

It is now still among the world's most endangered primates.

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