Photo courtesy Mehgan Murphy Dr. Benjamin Beck with two golden lion tamarins in Brazil.

Photo Courtesy of AMLD Agroforestry efforts with the Golden Lion Tamarin Association.

Associação Mico-Leão Dourado (AMLD), also known as the Golden Lion Tamarin Association, is one of Brazil’s most prominent non-governmental conservationorganizations.  Through the work of AMLD, its founders and its collaborators, the golden lion tamarin population has increased from a mere 300 in 1983 to more than 1,600 today. The species has been officially upgraded from “critically endangered” to “endangered” – the first, and only, such recognition for any primate species. This success resulted from a blend of efforts, including study of the behavioral ecology of the species, rescue and translocation of remnant populations, habitat recovery and reserve management, enhanced law enforcement, reintroduction of captive-born tamarins, and community conservation education.

Dr. Benjamin Beck, Great Ape Trust’s director of conservation, continued to work on the reintroduction of golden lion tamarins in Brazil in 2007, which is the 24th year of his involvement with this project. The main current challenge for this reintroduction is to monitor the size and distribution of the reintroduced population, and integrate it into the larger wild population. The reintroduced population numbers about 550, about a third of the entire wild population and rapidly colonizes any vacant forest habitat. About a third of the wild tamarins live on two federal biological reserves, but most of them live on privately owned land. Establishing and maintaining good relationships with land owners is essential, as is trying to bring long-term formal protection for the forests on these private properties. One method is for the owners to create permanent private nature reserves, roughly equivalent to what we in the United States call land trusts. The owners get tax incentives, and must agree to environmentally-friendly restrictions on land use that will remain in effect even when the property is sold. This is a complicated, legally demanding and expensive process.

Photo Courtesy of AMLD

AMLD provides assistance from its Geoprocessing Laboratory to precisely map the candidate properties using global information systems, thereby saving survey fees. The Association’s Executive Secretary, Denise Rambaldi, is an attorney, and helps to draw up the legal documents. About 15 properties (many with golden lion tamarins) have already gained private reserve status, and an equal number are being prepared. Permanent private reserves can only be created in countries where legally deeded property ownership and precisely demarcated property boundaries exist. This is not yet the case in many great ape range countries, but as these systems develop, the experience in Brazil will become an important model for protecting apes on private land. This is another leading edge initiative, of the sort that has made the golden lion tamarin conservation program an internationally recognized success, and a valuable model for great ape conservation. The Trust provided $5,000 to support the Association’s Geoprocessing Laboratory in 2007, and funded Beck’s annual trip to Brazil to review progress on the reintroduction.

One measure of success is that the Bruno Schubert Foundation of Germany chose Rambaldi, and Andreia Fonseca Martins, Beck’s reintroduction field coordinator, as recipients of its annual prestigious international “boots on the ground” conservation award. The award was conferred in a ceremony in the ancient “Römer” (city hall) in Frankfurt, Germany in June of 2007.

Web site: http://nationalzoo.si.edu/ConservationAndScience/EndangeredSpecies/GLTProgram/GLTP/AMLD.cfm