Angela Maria Maldonado Rodriguez

The Woolly Monkey Project: Status and Conservation of Primates in Amacayacu National Park (Amazonas Department, Colombia) - A Community-Based Project

The Woolly Monkey Project. Photo: Noga Shanne.

Lagothrix lagotricha - Conservation status downgraded to Lower Risk Least Concern (Lc) (Photo source Angela Maldonado).

A hunter from the Tikuna indigenous community of San Martin de Amacayacu. (Photo source Angela Maldonado).

The most recent classification of Lagothrix lagotricha by the IUCN ( (Rylands et. al. 2000) has downgraded its status to Lower Risk: “Least Concern” (Lc), this reclassification needs further revision by the Colombian members of the IUCN, as they did not participate in the reclassification process (com. pers. Defler, member IUCN, Colombia). In a personal communication, Rylands said that the status assesment was based on information from the Ecuadorian woolly monkey population.

Unfortunately, in Colombia information referring to the impact of hunting on large-bodied primate species does not exist and as Defler (2003) suggests, census work is needed to increase our knowledge of the presence or absence of these animals throughout their presumed range, including whether or not the species is present or absent in certain units of the national park system. On the other hand, Peres (1991) proposed that all subspecies of woolly monkeys should be regarded as “endangered” as they will continue to be rapidly driven to extinction in areas accessible to humans as he discovered while carrying out censuses over a twenty five year period in the Brazilian Amazon.

I conducted a pilot project in August 2003, resulting in the support of the six indigenous communities that are settled at Amacayacu National Park. The work is divided into two parts: 1) to determine the current conservation status of the nine primate species at the study site, and 2) to implement a community-based education programme focusing on woolly monkeys (Lagothrix lagotricha), the hunting target species.