The orange-haired, 10-inch-tall golden lion tamarins are a familiar sight in zoos like Wilmington’s Brandywine Zoo.
But due to deforestation caused by agriculture and urban development in Brazil, the number of these adorable monkeys have plummeted over the decades. In the 1980s, Benjamin Beck -- a retired general curator for the Smithsonian’s National Zoo -- was part of an effort to reintroduce zooborn golden lion tamarins into the wild.
“We recognized in 1983 there were only a 150 [golden lion tamarins] in the wild and there were 315 zoos, naturally some of our thoughts turned to returning some of these zoo animals to the wild,” said Beck.
And efforts in the beginning weren’t too successful. He writes about the evolution of the conservation strategy in his book, Thirteen Golden Monkeys, which was released in 2013.
Beck will be giving a talk about his conservation work at the Brandywine Zoo this Thursday, October 8th at 7:30 p.m.
