An endangered species of monkey has seen its numbers increase considerably in the last thirty years.

According to the Xinhau news agency, the number of wild grey snub-nosed monkeys in China's Guizhou Province, the only place they are found in the world, has more than doubled in the last three decades.

Now, there are around 850 creatures living in the province, compared to approximately 400 in 1979, figures from the Fanjingshan National Nature Reserve Administration Bureau showed.

The bureau has managed to breed 16 of the monkeys since 1992 from seven of the animals which were captured from the wild.

It is measures such as these, Xinhau noted, which appear to have helped boost the numbers of the rare animal.

The wild grey snub-nose monkey has a reproductive cycle of three to six years, which makes it more difficult to breed them successfully.

It lives in the Fanjingshan National Nature Reserve in Guizhou, a mountainous area which covers 419 square kilometres.

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