Neotropical Primate Conservation
A small charity with abundant commitment
And just two weeks into the year and another rescued animal. This time a young woolly monkey bought in a local market and kept as a pet. We are still trying to find a permanent home for him, but until then we need to make sure he’s fed and cared for, as well as getting all his health checks done. Please keep up your support so we can keep helping animals like him.
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It’s only the 5th of January and we already have our first rescue of the year, a baby Ocelot. We don’t know his story yet, but tomorrow we will start with the paperwork and with finding him a good home in a rescue centre.
He is doing well but his test results came back positive for multiple types of intestinal and skin parasites, most probably due to poor care after his capture and proximity to domestic animals. We have just given him his first treatment and hope he will fully recover soon.
During September and November the NPC Colombia team were in Santa Cecilia Colombia developing the ground work for future environmental education work focused on primate conservation, as well as helping in the biodiversity festival organized each year by the Pio XII school. All the activites were led by our volunteers Jennifer Rey-Goyeneche and Rosie Street, giving all their love and energy to the project. Many thanks to them both and to the community of Santa Cecilia.
We hope you enjoy the short video presentation they made covering the amazing project.
You can check out our latest publication “Occupancy Modeling for the Conservation Assessment of the Peruvian Night Monkey (Aotus miconax)” free from the IUCN Primate Specialist Group website. Thanks to Nicola Campbell and all the co-authors for their efforts.
Yesterday and today we have been carrying out Environmental Education workshops with secondary school students in Uchiza, San Martin, during the 3rd annual Yellow Tailed Woolly Monkey festival. The students wrote and acted in plays about wildlife trafficking and it’s effect on animals, helping generate empathy and awareness.
During the third annual yellow tailed woolly monkey festival in Uchiza, Peru, we have also given talks and practical workshops to students of the Instituto Tecnológico Francisco Vigo Caballero, studying the environment and natural resources course. During the theory sessions we discussed community conservation, the illegal wildlife trade, methods to evaluate wildlife populations, and of course the ecology and conservation of the yellow tailed woolly monkey. The practical part of the course was helping in the Bosques de Sinai Conservation Concession, where students were able to put into practice the methods they learnt to monitor flora and fauna.
Amazing news! Last year Sean McHugh passed us information about a new population of yellow tailed woolly monkeys far to the south of their known distribution (Recently published in the journal Oryx, McHugh et al 2019). Since then, together with the Equipo Primate Loreto, We have been surveying the areas between the previously known distribution and the new sighting. Now, thanks to Elvis Charpentier Uraco, we have been able to find them, and even further south than the previous sighting. Our survey work will continue until we know the limits of their distribution in these new areas. This is really good news for the species as it means their population size may be significantly larger than thought, helping protect them against extinction.
In the photos below you can see the clear phenotypic differences between the southern population (upper) and the northern population (lower).
Photos thanks to Elvis Charpentier and Andrew Walmsley
Thanks to Primate Society of Great Britain, International Primatological Society,
American Society of Primatologists (Members of the American Society of Primatologists) and Primate Conservation Inc. for funding the study.
