Golden lion tamarins first had to master vine climbing
before they could be released into the wild. (151K)
Tamarins running free in the National Zoo. (1,300K)
(All Photos By Jessie Cohen, NZP Staff Photographer)
Smithsonian News Service - March 1991
Wanted: Active, South American male with
jungle survival skills to provide a good home
for energetic female with offspring.
Golden hair over entire body a must.
Send pedigree to: The Nestbox,
Valley Trail, National Zoological Park,
Washington, D C
That is how a personals ad might read for a golden lion tamarin living in one of the world's zoos. Of course, such printed pleas are out of the question, but some researchers have become tamarin matchmakers, systematically breeding and returning tamarins to their native habitat, the coastal rainforests of Brazil. These efforts, the researchers say, could save golden lion tamarins from extinction in the wild.
The golden lion tamarin, a squirrel-size primate with a luxurious gold-to-orange mane, is in desperate straits. The animal has become nearly extinct in the wild because of forest clearing for agriculture and because of the illegal trade in exotic pets.
In 1983, for example, when scientists began studies in Brazil, only 200 golden lion tamarins remained there, says Dr. Jim Dietz, a conservation biologist at the University of Maryland in College Park. Fewer tamarins lived in zoos, such as the Smithsonian's National Zoological Park in Washington, D.C.
Today, the situation is improving. Nearly 600 tamarins have been raised in zoos and, after years of painstaking research, 89 have been reintroduced in Brazil as part of the cooperative Golden Lion Tamarin Conservation Program. Most recently, in January 1991, nine tamarins from two families living in zoos in Chicago and South Carolina began a new life in the wild.
In addition, ownership of all golden lion tamarins living in zoos was recently given to the people of Brazil. There, conservation and education efforts during the past seven years have contributed greatly to the chances that tamarins--and many other species that share their habitat--can survive. In fact, the underlying goal of the tamarin reintroduction project has been to preserve the habitat for the myriad mammals, birds and invertebrates that live in the coastal rainforest, says Dr. Benjamin Beck, associate director for biological programs at the National Zoo.
The conservation program was initiated by scientists at the National Zoo in 1972. They learned, first, how to breed the tamarins successfully and, then, how to reintroduce them to the wild. But the wild in this case--the coastal rain forest--has shrunk by 98 percent since 1850.
Fortunately, a fragile island of rainforest, the Poço das Antas Biological Reserve, still exists 60 miles northeast of the teaming metropolis of Rio De Janeiro. The reserve--12,000 acres of forest, swamp and grassland--is a lifeboat for the tamarins. "The golden lion tamarins would be extinct in the wild today if not for the creation of this reserve," Beck says emphatically.
In Poço das Antas, the two most recent tamarin families from North America--Jenny, Maria, Carlos, Pedro and Pablo, along with Celia, Marty, Maude and Melvin--were introduced to two males who have survived the travails of forest life. Beck and others hope that these male tamarins will each form a group with one of the reintroduced groups, and that the males will pass on their survival skills--avoiding predators, foraging and choosing nest sites--to the newcomers.
Beck calls this reintroduction method the "veteran/greenhorn" technique. He is studying the procedure as a possible improvement over the method of simply releasing tamarins which are naive about the rigors of forest survival.
"This is new ground for us," Beck says. "Over the years, we have developed techniques to handle a variety of problems, but the passing on of learned skills is an important step in speeding up reintroductions and increasing their success."
GLTs use their dextrous fingers to probe for insects.
This added protien in their diet is important for reproduction.
"Before reintroduction of tamarins was possible, we needed a zoo population breeding successfully enough that we could have 'surplus' animals to return to the wild," says Dr. Devra Kleiman, assistant director for research at the National Zoo. "In 1973, the situation in zoos was bleak. We had fighting within groups, nutritional problems and low reproduction rates as well as high mortality rates among those few infants that were born." At that time, tamarins were kept in large groups of breeding-age animals along with their offspring, she explains.
Kleiman had a hunch, however, that keeping the animals in large groups was the problem. Her previous work included research on dogs, wolves and rodents. Most of these animals are monogamous, forming pairs with exclusive reproductive access to one another for extended periods of time. Although this trait is unusual among primates, she concluded that golden lion tamarins also practice monogamy.
Kleiman and her colleagues also discovered the importance of keeping young tamarins around their parents as the next set of young are raised. "Tamarin adolescents become involved in infant care because the 2 1/2 ounce infants grow quickly and become a major burden on the mother after about the first week," she says. In turn, the social and parental experience adolescents gain is indispensable for survival as adults.
Mothers and fathers both provide care for young tamarins.
With the mystery solved, the animals began to breed successfully. It became necessary, though, to expand the tamarin gene pool beyond one zoo. Kleiman pioneered a system in which researchers at a number of zoos agreed to breed and manage their separate groups of tamarins as one population, further reducing problems associated with inbreeding, such as high infant mortality rates.
By 1983, sufficient numbers of tamarins existed for the scientists to consider reintroduction. But the Poço das Antas reserve was also at capacity in terms of the numbers of golden lion tamarins it could support. The next step, then, Beck says, was to enlist the help of landowners adjacent to the reserve to find new sites where zoo-bred animals could be released.
"We enlisted the support of the 'fazendeiros,'" he says. "These are land-owners who agree to preserve patches of forest simply for the benefit of golden lion tamarins." So far, about 2,000 acres have been donated--a 15 percent increase in the area of the Poço das Antas reserve. "Thousands of additional acres will needed if the golden lion tamarin is to be saved," Kleiman adds. "The tamarins need space to find unrelated mates and avoid inbreeding."
A tamarin takes its first steps into the wild.
To gain the support of local landowners, as well as people throughout Brazil, an intensive education program was launched. "The education program targeted the 80,000 people living in the rural area surrounding the reserve through public leaders, school teachers and agriculture extension agencies," says LouAnn Dietz, organizer of the program and a program manager for the World Wildlife Fund. "Urban populations were reached through radio and television."
The local program sponsored school plays, education kits and town parades. It succeeded in creating environmental awareness in local communities, Dietz says, and the radio and television programs began convincing city dwellers that endangered golden lion tamarins are not pets.
Since 1984, 51 offspring of reintroduced tamarins have been born in the wild and 34 have survived. One released male even managed to find his way into the life of a wild tamarin and, together, they produced two additional offspring.
Tamarins let loose with a loud alarm call
whenever danger is near.
Nonetheless, last year, years of hard work nearly went up in smoke. A small fire got out of control, setting more than one-third of the reserve ablaze.
"Had it not been for 450 members of the Brazil fire brigade," Beck says, "and the last-minute donation of 'Bambi buckets' by the Friends of the National Zoo and the Jersey Wildlife Preservation trust, we would have lost a considerable amount of forest." Bambi buckets are large reusable bags suspended from the bottom of helicopters that can be loaded with water at lakes to douse fires.
Early indications show that the reserve may recover faster than expected. But Beck cautions that recovery for the golden lion tamarins must be measured in numbers of offspring in succeeding generations. The 34 tamarins born to date are encouraging he says, but he never looks too far ahead.
"To talk about the 'success' of this program would be misleading," Beck says. "No one can honorably claim success for any conservation program. Conservation is a responsibility that extends over centuries to each new human generation."
Using a portable antenna and receiver,
biologist track radio-collared animals.
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