(Xinhuanet)--The number of golden monkeys, a Chinese rare species, doubled in the past 15 years from 501 to more than 1,200 in Shennongjia, a natural reserve in central China's Hubei Province.

    The group of golden monkeys enjoys a special zone of 100 square kilometers where no visitors are allowed to enter except researchers and forest guards, said Zhong Ran, deputy director of Shennongjia Natural Reserve Administration.

    In a bid to better protect the rare animals, Shennongjia launched a program in April to study the golden monkey groups, Zhong said.

    The program is set to finish in five to eight years with more knowledge about the animals gained, he said.

    The enlarged number of golden monkeys owes much to the change of the developing model of the natural reserve in recent years, the official said.

    As an area with rich natural forest resources, Shennongjia contributed timber of over 100,000 cubic meters every year to support China's economy from the 1960s to 1980s.

    But deforestation seriously damaged the local ecology and the number of wild animals dropped. In the 1990s, the coverage rate of forests was only 63.5 percent in Shennongjia.

    Following the change of forest policy from the central government, Shennongjia shifted from source of timber to a forest conservation area in latter 1990s.

    Golden monkeys, known as China's "state treasures" along with pandas, are under state level protection. Those living in Shennongjia are Chuan golden monkeys, one of the three kinds of golden monkeys with a total number of less than 10,000 in the world.

    Shennongjia, the watershed of Yangtze River and Han River, is the best preserved genetic storeroom of animals and plants at the same latitude on the earth. In 1990, it was included in the human and biosphere preservation network by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.