Golden Lion Tamarin Association
Long-time Philadelphia Zoo conservation partner, Associação Mico-Leão-Dourado (Golden Lion Tamarin Association) employs several strategies to save tamarins including:
- Reintroduction and Translocation
- Reforestation
- Watershed management
- Public education
The Golden Lion Tamarin Association (GLTA) has worked to gain landowner and local government support for its efforts to improve and preserve habitat. As a result, a growing number of landowners are dedicating forested areas on their property as private reserves for this small monkey.
Planting “tree corridors” to link these private forests is then facilitated by GLTA. The natural bridges the corridors provide allow tamarins to explore formerly inaccessible pieces of their habitat and also foster genetic diversity by connecting otherwise segregated tamarin groups.
By forming alliances around conservation goals like these, GLTA has also spearheaded the creation of a regional consortium to protect the São João River watershed, a critical area of golden lion tamarin habitat; and was instrumental in raising enough money to purchase a large privately-held parcel of land that now provides an 18-mile long connection between the União Biological Reserve and neighboring forest fragments.
Today approximately 1,600 golden lion tamarins, including zoo-born animals reintroduced into the wild by conservation workers, are living in isolated forest fragments in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. Of these, the Golden Lion Tamarin Association is managing approximately 1,463 individuals and tamarins are using connected habitat that spans over 30 private ranches and two federal reserves totaling 10,600 protected hectares.
Dr. Andy Baker, the Philadelphia Zoo’s Chief Operating Officer, has spent nearly twenty years working with GLTA studying the social behaviors of golden lion tamarins in captivity and in Brazil, and is using his findings to inform and enhance our in situ and ex situ conservation efforts to save this species.
The Philadelphia Zoo is committed to saving species by connecting families with wildlife and the environment we share.
As a tangible demonstration of this commitment, in March 2010, the Zoo presented its first Global Conservation Prize to the Associação Mico-Leão-Dourado (Golden Lion Tamarin Association) in Brazil. Thanks in large part to their work; these once rare monkeys have moved from the "critically endangered" category on the IUCN’s Red List to “endangered.” Though many challenges still lie ahead, this reduced listing is a positive sign of progress.
The Global Conservation Prize will provide financial support to the Golden Lion Tamarin Association for the next ten years so that they may continue their work ensuring the long-term protection of golden lion tamarins.
Just as we’re planting corridors of trees to connect isolated patches of forest in Brazil “Treetop Trails,” our innovative new animal trail in the treetops, will join Zoo habitats for golden lion tamarins and other primates. The trail way at the Rare Animal Conservation Center is the first phase of a Zoo-wide system that will link exhibits across the Zoo.
In addition to the tamarins you’ll find in Treetop Trails, look for a second group next to the PECO Primate Reserve. During the summer months, they can be spotted in the trees wearing radio collars so we can keep track of them while they roam freely in the Zoo.