Cherished Golden Lion Tamarins are Bouncing Back in Brazil

The captivating golden lion tamarin is a small monkey found in eastern Brazil. With its silky orange-gold mane, and wide-eyed stare, it is the subject of a recent CNN Science photo-led feature, “Back from the brink: Golden lion tamarin.” 

As this title indicates, this popular species is under threat. This is because the Atlantic rainforest in which it lives, in the state of Rio de Janeiro, has been cut to just seven percent of its original area, and is now highly fragmented. But there is good news to celebrate too, as due to conservation efforts, golden lion tamarins have made a heartwarming comeback.

More About These Treasured Golden Primates
According to Forests News, Brazil is the world’s most biodiverse country, with at least 103, 870 animal species, including the golden lion tamarin.

“Beautiful, simian-like cats similar to small lions” is how these alluring monkeys were described by Antonio Pigafetta, an explorer joining the first sea voyage to successfully go around the world in 1519. Five hundred years later, golden lion tamarins adorn the country’s 20 real banknotes, and a postage stamp, CNN details. They have also become something of a status symbol for landowners, with many boasting of the presence of golden lion tamarins on their land.

These primates spend their days roaming the tree cover and canopies in the lowland areas of Brazil’s Atlantic Rainforest, as the Earth Day organization recounts. They use their long tails to help them balance from branch to branch, and their long fingers to dig for insects, fruit, and small vertebrates for food. Always born in pairs of twins, the siblings and father help the mother raise them in the canopy, away from predators such as large snakes and raptors.

Buoyed by Conservation Efforts
Back in the 1970s, their diminishing habitats, as well as their capture for the pet trade, drastically reduced the local, wild population of golden lion tamarins to an estimated 200 individuals on the brink of extinction. 

However, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) went on to upgrade their status from critically endangered to endangered in 2003. This is largely due to an ongoing medley of conservation measures introduced to protect and nurture golden lion tamarins, enabling these cute creatures to make a significant comeback. 

These initiatives include reintroduction programs of zoo-bred animals, vaccination schemes, and projects aimed at reconnecting fragmented habitats though reforestation efforts and planting wildlife corridors. 

Also known as wildlife crossings, these corridors of native vegetation join two or more larger areas of similar wildlife habitats,  and facilitate the healthy movement of animals and robust, genetically diverse populations.

One such reforestation project from the forest restoration program,  Associação Mico-Leão-Dourado (AMLD,) is credited by US public charity, Save the Golden Lion Tamarin (SGLT) with being responsible for reforesting 208 hectares (approximately 518 acres) of land between 2014-2022, so consolidating and connecting several isolated blocks of golden lion tamarin habitats large enough to sustain a healthy population overcoming inbreeding risks.

Discussing this AMLD initiative, the Rainforest Trust outlines that after it purchased the San Antonio Ranch, a 244-acre property strategically located between the two largest forest fragments, ALMD contracted a cooperative from the surrounding rural district of Gaviões to plant native species such as the Brazilian shaving-brush tree  across an important ecological corridor, connecting the two largest forest fragments with known golden lion tamarin populations.

This reconnection of habitat land has also helped these small primates overcome disease outbreaks, such as the yellow fever outbreak in 2017-2018. “I was thrilled and relieved to learn that the reduced tamarin populations bounced back so quickly.  They must have received immigrants from adjacent connected  forest fragments, as we had hoped,” reveals conservation biologist James Dietz, SGLT vice president, and founding director.

Encouragingly, a 2023 census from SGLT, showed a 31 percent increase in the wild golden lion tamarin, with an estimated total population of 4,800.

Spotlighting Illegal Sport Hunting
Nature lovers aren’t the only people interested in Brazil’s rich fauna. Sadly, one of the ongoing threats to these vibrant small monkeys comes from sport hunting in Brazil, the vast majority of which is illegal, as hunting anything other than the invasive European wild boar is against the law, as Forests News reports. Many of these hunters use social media networks such as YouTube and Facebook to share and boast about their catches, even of endangered animals.

A recent study supported what had, until its publication, gained significant media attention in Brazil, but had been dismissed by some as mere rumor. Entitled “Exposing illegal hunting and wildlife depletion in the world’s largest tropical country through social media data,” and published in Conservation Biology in 2024, it zooms in on the work of conservationists over a two-year-period analyzing social media posts to expose this covert hunting activity happening throughout Brazil.

The researchers diligently checked five Facebook groups publishing posts with images of illegal fauna kills. They found evidence of 4658 hunted animals from 157 native species, 19 of which are threatened with extinction. 

The authors of the study conclude that their  “results highlight that illegal sport hunting adds to the pressures of subsistence hunting and the wild meat trade on Brazil’s wildlife populations.” They recommend enhanced surveillance efforts to reduce illegal sport hunting levels.