In Search of Panama’s Elusive Spider Monkeys

For a short second, as tons of of blue morpho butterflies floated gracefully round us, the inexperienced hues of the tropical forest had been remodeled right into a neon blue.

However the dreamlike scene, harking back to one thing out of James Cameron’s “Avatar,” was interrupted by a collection of loud chirps from the cover above. Straining my eyes to see up into the treetops, I caught a glimpse of the culprits: a pair of orange-tinted Azuero spider monkeys looking for fruit.

This extremely uncommon subspecies was the rationale we had been right here. After six grueling days spent fruitlessly trekking by way of Panama’s tropical dry forest, we had lastly discovered them.

The sighting was momentary. The sound of cows from a close-by pasture startled the nimble primates, and so they retreated deeper into the security of their forest house.

Southern Panama’s Azuero Peninsula, a sq. block of land that juts out some 50 miles into the Pacific Ocean, is house to the nation’s solely remaining tropical dry forest, an ecosystem that experiences a extra important dry season than moist season, and the place moisture evaporation usually exceeds precipitation all year long.

In Azuero, the dry forest has been fragmented by deforestation from cattle ranching and the clearcutting of coastal bushes to make room for luxurious houses, leaving remoted pockets of forest scattered throughout an in any other case treeless panorama. These habitat-islands provide marooned havens for tons of of animal and hen species which can be discovered nowhere else within the nation, together with the critically endangered Azuero spider monkey.

Throughout a inhabitants survey in 2013, the primatologist Dr. Pedro Mendez-Carvajal of Oxford Brookes College estimated that solely 145 Azuero spider monkeys remained within the wild, making them one of many rarest subspecies of primates in Central and South America. Along with affected by habitat loss, the animals, that are seen as pests, are additionally hunted and poisoned by native farmers.

Within the fall of 2017, I traveled to the Azuero Peninsula to work alongside Professional Eco Azuero, a conservation group that goals to guard the realm’s biodiversity and assist native individuals make knowledgeable and sustainable selections about their surroundings.

Based by Ruth Metzel, together with native scientists and landowners, and at present led by Sandra Vasquez de Zambrano, P.E.A. has developed a community-oriented strategy to conservation that features working alongside farmers to replant bushes, working with native lecturers to create lesson plans round conservation and sustainability, and partnering with native supporters to foster a tradition of conservation and land stewardship.

Based mostly out of the browsing village of Pedasi, I spent a month embedded with the P.E.A., splitting my time between the forest and the ocean. Within the inside, I joined a group of native volunteers and biology college students from the College of Panama throughout a casual survey to doc the well being of identified spider monkey households. I additionally captured images that may very well be utilized in neighborhood education schemes.

Guided by ideas from native farmers and college students, we spent our days trekking by way of dense undergrowth and up waterfalls in the hunt for the elusive primates. At night time, we visited rural colleges to present slide exhibits about what we had discovered, sharing photos of wildlife that many youngsters had by no means seen, regardless of having lived with the animals in their very own backyards.

On the seashore I adopted the efforts of P.E.A. and Tortugas Pedasi, a associate group, to doc the beautiful Pacific shoreline. On the time, the conservation teams had been attempting to realize nationwide safety for the coastal Pablo Arturo Barrios Wildlife Refuge, whereas instructing college students about the advantages of marine conservation.

Simply as I had witnessed within the forest, members of the native communities labored alongside these organizations in a formidable exhibit of eco-minded camaraderie.

The creation of a wildlife hall — spanning 75 miles and 62,000 acres — throughout the Azuero Peninsula was one of many first initiatives initiated by P.E.A. when it was based 12 years in the past. By planting bushes throughout clear-cut landscapes, the hall will improve the scale of accessible habitat by reconnecting a number of islands of forest which can be at present remoted from each other. As soon as the hall is accomplished, P.E.A. hopes that the rise in forest habitat will enable for animal populations — together with the elusive spider monkeys — to broaden.

It took a number of years earlier than the thought gained momentum, since rural farmers had been skeptical about the advantages of sacrificing helpful grazing land to regrow forests.

“Once we first began, we thought that it was going to be as simple as knocking on individuals’s doorways, planting bushes and making a distinction,” recounted Ms. Vasquez de Zambrano, P.E.A.’s government director. “After all that didn’t work, so we wanted to research a strategy to get into these communities.”

After discovering that lecturers had been the important thing to incomes the villagers’ belief, P.E.A. initiated a collection of instructional packages centered round conservation, sustainability and coexistence. In time they had been instructing over 700 college students annually. As P.E.A. fosters a brand new era of younger environmental activists, mother and father started to listen to and digest the significance of conservation by way of conversations with their household quite than with strangers.

“It’s extra significant when it’s our personal youngsters who say we should reforest and defend nature,” Ms. Vasquez de Zambrano mentioned. “I believe working with youngsters has made an actual distinction.”

At present, over 400 farmers have pledged land for the wildlife hall undertaking. 5 hundred acres of latest bushes will likely be planted on donated land in 2022 alone. And thru the collective assist of native organizations, college students and neighborhood activists, the coastal Pablo Barrios Refuge gained nationwide safety in 2019.

The Azuero continues to face severe threats, together with the re-institution of large-scale mining throughout the area and the introduction of latest laws that would enable growth on protected lands. Nonetheless, Ms. Vasquez stays optimistic concerning the energy of instructing and fostering new environmental reformers.

“Our biggest affect is the best way we have now modified individuals’s minds,” she advised me. “We’re making a tradition of conservation — and getting individuals to develop into advocates for their very own neighborhood.”

Matt Stirn is an archaeologist and photojournalist primarily based in Boston and Jackson Gap, Wyo. You may observe his work on Instagram.