You can go home again: Tamarin monkeys set free in Brazil

The reduction in population of golden lion tamarins is attributed to forest clearing for agriculture and illegal trade in exotic pets

June 16, 2000
Web posted at: 12:33 p.m. EDT (1633 GMT)

By Environmental News Network staff

Six golden lion tamarin monkeys, bred in a captive program at Brookfield Zoo near Chicago, arrived this week in Brazil, where they are being introduced into the wild in a forest reserve in Rio de Janeiro.

The squirrel-size monkey has been brought back from the brink of extinction through a global captive breeding effort involving more than 100 zoos around the world. The marmoset is one of few primates that have been reintroduced successfully to their natural environment.

In the 1960s, only about 200 golden lion tamarins remained in the wild, due to the destruction of their habitat, Brazil's Atlantic coastal rain forest - Mata Atlantica.

Less than 7 percent of the Mata Atlantica, which once covered over 100 million hectares, an area about the size of Egypt, remains today. Around Rio de Janeiro, the only place in the world where the golden lion tamarin is found, the figure is about 2 percent.

The family of captive-bred tamarins - mother, father and four youngsters - arrived in Rio de Janeiro after a 24-hour flight from Chicago via Miami.

Their home now is a private farm close to the world's only golden lion tamarin reserve in Poço das Antas, Rio de Janeiro state, where there are an estimated 920 tamarins living in the wild. The family will be monitored closely over the next few months to ensure they are adapting to their new surroundings.

Last week, fire fighters fought a bush blaze that destroyed about 300 hectares of the Poço das Antas reserve. A spokesman for the reserve said the fire affected mostly ground vegetation.

"The tamarins were not at risk. A small area at the edge of the forest reserve was burnt, but the animals were much deeper inside," he said.

It is believed the fire was started by a member of Brazil's landless peasant protest movement, Sem Terra. The man, who was clearing land in preparation for planting crops, fled the scene when the fire blazed out of control and spread to the tamarin reserve.

Nearly extinct in the wild, golden lion tamarins were flown from Brookfield Zoo near Chicago to Brazil to begin a new life

The tamarin conservation project, started in 1974, has been so successful that the reserve and its surrounding fragments of forest have reached saturation.

"We've had a lot of success in the past 25 years," said Denise Mareal Rambaldi, executive director of Brazil's National Golden Lion Tamarin Association, "thanks to the very public image of the golden lion tamarin."

The project aims to have 2,000 golden lion tamarins living in the wild by its deadline of 2025. Population studies suggest that this is the minimum number needed to ensure sufficient genetic diversity for the future and unassisted survival of the species.

Conservationists working at the reserve estimate they will need 25,000 hectares of forest to sustain a population of this size. Poço das Antas and the surrounding pockets of Mata Atlantica held by sympathetic private owners who support the program total less than half that area.

Rambaldi said future progress will depend on successful reforestation projects and greater collaboration with local landowners. So far, 16 farms in the Poço das Antas region have provided forest for more than 320 captive-bred golden lion tamarins.

"... One thousand animals is not enough, and the space we have is full," said Rambaldi. "We need to plant forest corridors to link the isolated habitats and increase the genetic flux between them.

"More importantly, we need to find private landowners with forest willing to take part in the program. These partnerships are vitally important to us."

Copyright 2000, Environmental News Network, All Rights Reserved

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Brookfield Zoo
Wildlife Preservation Trust International
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