Brazil Builds Special Bridge To Help Endangered Monkeys Safely Cross Busy Highway
Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro have built a bridge across a busy highway to ensure monkeys are able to safely cross a busy road and access more forest area.
The Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro has built a bridge across a busy highway to ensure monkeys are able to safely cross a busy road and access more forest area.
Conservationists in Rio de Janeiro were becomingly increasingly concerned by a recent drop in population numbers of the threatened golden lion tamarin, Reuters reported.
Reuters
It should be noted that the Atlantic Forest of Rio de Janeiro state is the only place in the world where the golden lion tamarin still exists in the wild.
The vigorous conservation efforts over the past few decades have managed to increase the population of golden lion tamarin, bringing the species back from the brink of extinction. But an outbreak of yellow fever in 2018 wiped out 32% of the population, as per Reuters.
It is being reported that there are an estimated 2,500 golden lion tamarins in the wild.
There were fears that the animals had become isolated due to a highway - but it is now hoped that the bridge will help the monkeys circulate over a wider forested area.
Reuters
"Scientists have shown that the population living there would be completely isolated from the other side of the road and that would create a real problem in terms of conservation," Luis Paulo Marques Ferraz, executive director of the metapopulation project that works to protect the numbers of golden lion tamarins, told Reuters.
"Genetically that population would be isolated and that is really bad. We need a large forest protected and connected," he said.
The bridge, built last year, has been planted with trees, shrubs and plants in the hope of making a natural corridor attractive to the primates. The vegetation is still young and will take time to grow to a size usable for the monkeys.
Reuters
Conservation groups estimate that the monkeys have lost 95% of their original habitat in Brazil.
"That¡¯s why this bridge here was so strategic and important for the conservation program," Ferraz said.
He added that a population of 2,000 golden lion tamarins should have at least 25,000 hectares of forest.
The current forest is cut up by pastures and roads and towns.
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