Good morning.
It’s snow for Whitewater today, with 2-4 inches expected, and a high temperature in the low teens. In Anchorage, it will be even colder (single digits), but they’ll have no snow.
There’s good news for conservationists today: Near-Extinct Monkeys Rediscovered in Borneo. Dave Mosher writes that
Deep in a pristine Borneo rainforest, researchers have found an endangered species of monkey recently feared to be extinct.
Surveys in the late 1970s spotted the monkey, called Miller’s grizzled langur, in Borneo’s easternmost national forest. Three decades later, all but 5 percent of the habitat had been destroyed by logging, agricultural encroachment, coal mining and fire.
As late as 2011, many researchers feared the langur was extinct. One place they hadn’t searched intensively, however, was Wehea — a rainforest preserve 90 miles west of the langur’s traditional territory.
Armed with camera traps and some luck, a survey team accidentally captured the first images of grizzled langurs in years.
“Locals knew they lived in this forest but had no idea what they were looking at. When we saw them, we were shocked,” said conservation scientist Brent Loken of Simon Fraser University, co-author of a study published online Jan. 20 in the American Journal of Primatology.
A Wisconsin scientist is among those studying the langur:
Stephanie Spehar, a primatologist at the University of Wisconsin in Oshkosh, said the adult langurs weigh between 13 and 16 pounds, munch primarily on leaves and tend to live in groups of one male, several females and their infants. She said it’s too soon to estimate their population size.
“We know almost nothing about this species or its ecology,” Spehar said. “I’m incredibly eager to begin the long-term ecology studies. That information will be crucial to their preservation.”
It’s three years since the last presidential inauguration, but the Wisconsin Historical Society recalls a particularly special inauguration for student-musicians in Milton:
1961 – Milton Marching Band Performs at Inauguration
On this date the 78-piece Milton Union High School Band, directed by Richard Dabson, marched in the parade at JFK’s inauguration in Washington, D.C. [Source: Janesville Gazette]
A bit more of music, from Google’s daily puzzle: “To which note does an orchestra concertmaster tune his instrument’s highest string?”
And on this January 20th, twenty years after the Milton band marched, on January 20th, 1981, “Iran released 52 Americans held hostage for 444 days, minutes after the presidency had passed from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan.”