Conservation of the yellow tailed woolly monkey in Peru

After Completion of the first survey of the yellow tailed woolly monkey  in over 25 years, Neotropical Primate Conservation has implemented a research and conservation project for this species. This runs hand-in-hand with reforestation and sustainable development work.

The species is listed by the IUCN as critically endangered and features on the current list of the world’s top 25 most endangered primates. It is endemic to a small area of cloud forest in the Tropical Andes region of Peru. This area is known to be the most biodiverse region on earth.

The current projects are being run in an area identified during the preliminary survey. This is an area where yellow tailed woolly monkeys are present in relatively high numbers. It is located between the Cordillera de Colan Nature Sanctuary and the Alto Mayo Protected Forest, thus forming a natural rainforest corridor between these two reserves.

This area faces immense pressures from mining concessions, commercial logging and land clearance for cattle ranching and coffee cultivation and its forests are disappearing rapidly. We are working with people from local communities who are interested in helping to create a new reserve for the conservation of this species. In return we are working to help create sustainable, eco-friendly income alternatives to the current non-sustainable practises in the area. Growing poverty and disastrous local climate changes have given many local people a first hand appreciation of the urgent need to adjust to a more sustainable way of life and are therefore they are more then willing to cooperate in any conservation effort.

The project combines the creation of a community run reserve with scientific census work within the proposed reserve, a reforestation program using native tree species that are beneficial to humans and wildlife, environmental education and the development of markets for native agriculture products and handicrafts made in the area.

During the last months we were able to take many photographic and video recordings of wild groups of these rare monkeys.