Habitat and Distribution
The distribution range of the golden snub-nosed monkey is limited to the mountains in four provinces in China: Sichuan, Gansu, Shaanxi, and Hubei. This monkey is found at elevations of 1,500-3,400 m. It lives at different elevations and increases or decreases the size of its home range with the change of seasons. The change in home range size and location is dependent upon the availability and distribution of food. The total area covered by its seasonal home ranges is surprisingly large for an arboreal species. One of the largest home ranges found covered 40 km2.
The golden snub-nosed monkey lives in temperate areas. It is limited to broadleaf deciduous, broadleaf deciduous-conifer mixed, or conifer forests.
In a study from 2000-2003 that was conducted in an area surrounding Yuhuangmiao village in Zhouzhi National Nature Reserve, in the Shaanxi Province in China, many methods were used to observe the Sichuan snub-nosed monkeys. The average annual temperature observed over the study period was 6.4°C with a minimum of -8.3°C in January and a maximum of 21.7°C in July. These temperatures observed are blamed for the limited vegetation of the monkeys. The vegetation varies with altitude from deciduous broadleaf forests at low elevations to mixed coniferous broadleaf forests above 2,200 m and coniferous forests above 2,600 m.
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