Conservationists Fight to Save Tiny Colombian Monkey

Cameron Walker
for National Geographic News

May 27, 2003

From Colombian villages to the theme parks at the Walt Disney World
Resort, Florida, conservationists are working to save a tiny monkey from
extinction in the wild.

The endangered cotton-top tamarin (Saguinus oedipus), which lives only in northwestern Colombia, has been threatened by dwindling habitat. Now, a research team from the United States and Colombia has been taking some creative steps to protect it.

Cotton-top tamarins have long been studied in captivity (thousands of them were exported to the United States for biomedical research before the animal was declared endangered in 1973), but "no one had done a lot of work with them in the wild," said biologist Anne Savage. She began working with captive tamarins in college, then switched focus to wild tamarins as a graduate student.

Now the conservation biologist at Disney's Animal Kingdom, Savage has combined scientific studies in the tamarins' native land with community outreach. The result has become the multidisciplinary Proyecto Tití, or Project Tamarin, which Savage directs.

The group works with Colombia's villagers to develop awareness of the tamarin's plight and create more sustainable living solutions that could help it and many other rainforest species. "Making the conservation of natural habitats and resources economically feasible for local communities will insure the survival of not only the cotton-top tamarin, but the native flora and fauna of Colombia," said Savage. "Our goal is to use the cotton-top tamarin as the flagship species for the conservation of Colombia's natural resources."

In the beginning, tamarins were little known, even in the Colombian forests. Savage said villagers who did spot a tamarin's shock of white hair believed that these monkeys were as plentiful as squirrels. When the biologist and her team surveyed Colombian schoolchildren in the late 1980s, more than 90 percent did not know that the tamarin was unique to Colombia's forests.

Through education programs and posters in schools and villages, Proyecto Tití has been making the tamarin a familiar figure in its homeland. Now, Colombia's Barranquilla Zoo has declared 2003 the year of the tamarin.

Science and Slingshots

Besides habitat destruction, another threat to the tamarins has been the local pet trade in Colombia. Villagers once used slingshots to snag parents from the trees and catch the young tamarins to be sold.

In response, Savage and her team started a program where children could trade in their slingshots for a stuffed animal of the cottontop tamarin.

Recently, Humberto Giraldo, a biologist and field coordinator for Proyecto Tití, returned to one village in search of a slingshot for an educational display. He couldn't find one. When he headed to the market for materials to make his own, the owner told him he wouldn't sell slingshot stuff anymore, because they hurt the tamarins.

Now, these monkeys are trapped only to learn more about their behavior and habitat. Because the monkeys are so hard to spot, Savage and her team use brightly colored, nontoxic hair dye to identify individual monkeys. Some tamarins have also been fitted with VHF transmitters, so the researchers can follow their movements and learn how and where the monkeys travel.

Five's Company for Cotton-tops

Tamarins, small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, have a unique way of caring for their young. An entire family works to care for new tamarins; in wild and captive monkeys, a group of five appears to be the ideal number of caretakers needed for healthy young. Young monkeys learn how to be parents from taking care of their siblings.

While multiple births might be a shock to human parents, it's routine for tamarin moms. Mothers almost always give birth to twins. And these two babies are one of the reasons why it's important to have strong family ties.

The two babies together make up 20 percent of mother's weight. It's like a 120-pound (55-kilogram) human woman giving birth to two 12-pound (5.5-kilogram) bundles of joy, said Charles Snowdon, professor of psychology and zoology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

"Then, there are no beds or nests to set the baby down in, and [in captivity] you're pregnant two weeks later," he said. "How can she do it by herself? She really can't." In the wild, tamarins breed only once a year, but still need the help to survive.

Snowdon, reproductive biologist Toni Ziegler, and numerous students and scientists are exploring tamarin behavioral biology. One current experiment has been measuring captive monkeys' response to a natural predator, the boa constrictor. Right now, Snowdon said, the snake doesn't faze tamarins used to captive living.

"What that's telling us is the monkeys that are in captivity don't have street smarts," he said. These researchers want to figure out how to train them to have the responses that would come naturally in the wild.

According to Savage, while it's unlikely that captive cotton-tops would be returned to the wild, learning about captive tamarin behavior could help in designing better places for cotton-tops in zoos and preserves.

Back in Colombia, the project also tries to transform practices to protect the rainforest, and in turn, shelter wild cotton-tops.

One of Proyecto Tití's projects has been the development of a new kind of cooking stove. Typically, a family might use 15 logs of wood a day in order to prepare their meals. The tamarin team helped create a stove called a binde, based upon a cooking method used traditionally in Colombia, which can cut wood use to five logs a day.

On a 7-hectare (17-acre) plot of land, the group started a training site for low-impact farming, as well as creating a section of fast-growing trees to use in the new stoves. A medicinal herb garden offers another source of income for the community.

At Disney's Animal Kingdom, live cotton-tops and their story are on display to educate people about the tiny tamarins. To protect cotton-tops at a distance, Savage said, "people can really pay attention to the type of things they're purchasing."

Choosing products that don't cause further habitat destruction, such as shade-grown coffee and sustainably harvested hardwoods can make a difference in the diminishing rainforest, Savage said.

From village children in Colombia to the young tourists in Walt Disney World, there is something everyone can do to help keep the cotton-top tamarin safe in its native forest home.