Multi-level and multi-disciplinary approaches to understanding endangered primates in complex landscapes: Golden-headed lion tamarins in Southern Bahia, Brazil

The effect of forest fragmentation on arboreal species can be measured
and quantified at various scales using a variety of technical approaches.
Multidisciplinary studies or networks of studies that integrate information
across scales and fields of expertise provide the most comprehensive
understanding of fragmentation. We illustrate the use of a multifaceted
approach to assess the threats, and conservation status, of golden-headed lion
tamarin (Leontopithecus chrysomelas, GHLT), an endangered primate residing
in a highly complex landscape of Southern Bahia, Brazil. Most remaining
habitat is in the hands of private landowners. In the west, the cattle industry
has contributed to the severe fragmentation of forests and led to small and
extremely isolated fragments. Local GHLT extinctions are occurring quickly.
In the east, declining market prices of cocoa and the rapid spread of a fungal
disease have devastated cocoa production, and once rather contiguous expanses
of shade-cocoa forests are rapidly being converted to unsuitable habitat. GHLTs
have been studied at the population level, with increasingly more information
being generated on their behavior, ecology, demographics, habitat, genetics,
and health. GHLTs (and their landscapes) have also been studied at broader
levels, yielding vital information regarding habitat change and fragmentation
trends over time, predictors of the presence and absence and viability and threat
analysis via simulation modeling. Collectively, this information is giving rise to
a more integrated sense of the mechanisms by which anthropogenic pressures
are affecting GHLTs. Additional factors regarding the rich history of GHLT
conservation efforts are discussed in this chapter. In an environment as spatially
and temporally dynamic as Southern Bahia, a conservation management
approach involving evaluation, adaptation, synthesis, and prioritization is
critical towards developing efficient conservation action plans sensitive to the
continuously changing socioeconomic context.

ISBN:978-1-4614-8838-5

Jaar van publicatie:2014