Durrell on mission to boost monkey business

Wednesday 20 May 2015

Durrell has launched an emergency rescue mission to stop its little black monkeys from dying out at the wildlife park.

The charity is on a mission to bring two black lion tamarins back from their native Brazil to help boost its dwindling population and get them breeding.

Durrell's been working with the critically endangered species for a number of years but they are now left with only one genetically viable pair living outside of Brazil.

Numbers in the wild are looking a bit better thanks to Islanders who started recycling their old drinks cans more than a decade ago. Durrell's Cans for Corridors project has helped replant millions of new trees in the Atlantic Rainforest that are growing to join fragments of forest together so that small isolated groups of tamarins can reach each other to mix and breed.

There is a danger that with small groups, the little troops of monkeys will end up suffering from inbreeding - and that makes them less healthy, and less likely to survive.

But the species won't be out of the woods until there's a good number of them living in captivity.

Durrell’s Head of Mammals Dominic Wormell said: “You may have seen there is an extreme drought in Sao Paulo at the moment, this is very worrying indeed. As the population is so small still, although recovering, one fire could spell disaster for the species. That is one reason why the captive population is so important.

“It will take a long time to bring this species back from the brink. Little by little we are achieving this, but all the time the species is still at risk from a stochastic event such as a fire.

“That is why a strong genetically healthy population in captivity is critically important, as it will provide a safety-net population but also provide animals for reintroduction at a later date into restored habitat.”

You can find out more here.