Animal Conservation

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Thirteen Gold Monkeys. By Benjamin B. Beck. 2013. Outskirts Press. (ISBN 9781478709725). 253 pp. Paperback. $15.95. In the early 1980s, a group of scientists from the Smithsonian Institution’s National Zoological Park set out to restore captiveraised golden lion tamarins (Leontopithecus rosalia – “GLTs” for short) to the Poço das Antas Reserve, a fragment of rainforest on the northeast coast of Brazil. The project was led by Benjamin Beck, specialist in primate behavior and conservation who has written a wonderful novel, Thirteen Gold Monkeys, a fictional account of efforts to save this species from extinction. GLTs are tiny New World monkeys with splendid orange-gold manes and bright, appealing faces. They live in small family groups high in the trees, where they build holes as protection against predators, including snakes, rats, and feral cats. Their weight averages ~500 g, and their length from nose to tail tip is ~60 cm. During the day, they forage for fruits, flowers, bird eggs, insects, and small vertebrates. This highly readable book contains a cast of characters unlike any seen before in a book about animal conservation. We meet a group of scientists using all their wits to develop a place where the GLTs can live, love, and produce young. We then meet the golden lion tamarins themselves. Both groups speak perfect English, sometime spiced with a bit of Portuguese – this is Brazil! Yes, the GLTs chat, challenge each other, and worry about what to expect from the “two leggers” (i.e., people). It’s impossible not to fall in love with Mom, Dad, little Venus, naughty Pandora, and others of the troupe as they accommodate to their new habitat. They find that they really can survive in the almost-wild surroundings the scientists have concocted for them. We mourn when tragedy strikes the little band, and worry when things don’t go as well as the scientists would like. One can ponder the merits and motives of all-out efforts to preserve endangered species. Perhaps they are the product of our innate biophilia, described by the great environmentalist Edward O. Wilson as humans’ instinctive urge to affiliate with other forms of life. Perhaps it is our way of making up for sins of the past, or for the exploitation of wildlife for pleasure and profit in so many parts of the world. And, of course, the question persists: What good is a species? In the early 1970s, when the environmental movement was just gathering speed, a well-known ecologist told the following story. Suppose you are on an airplane flying from New York to Seattle. Taking off from LaGuardia Airport, you notice that a rivet is missing from the wing outside your window. That’s only one rivet, you tell yourself, and settle back to watch a movie. A little later, you see that two more rivets have disappeared. How odd, you say. Each wing contains thousands of rivets, but a whisper of concern crosses your mind. Suppose ten rivets are missing. Twenty. Will your journey be safe? Small things provide safety and security for life on Earth, be they insects that pollinate crops, plankton at the bottom of an aquatic food chain, or rivets on an airplane wing. Rare species – black-footed ferrets, California condors, and Karner blue butterflies, first named by novelist and entomologist Vladimir Nabokov – speak to the health of an ecosystem. Conservation biologists such as Benjamin Beck restore damaged ecosystems to health. For him, a Brazilian rainforest without golden lion tamarins is incomplete. Because of Beck and his group, more than 600 of the tiny golden primates now thrive in one of the richest habitats in the world. This delightful book is in a class alone. Reading it, educators and students can learn about animal behavior, how scientists work in the field, the nature of human frailty in a challenging situation, and, above all, how persistence can save some of the Earth’s most vulnerable creatures. More good news: the Brazilian government is on the way to designating the golden lion tamarin the official mascot of the 2016 Olympic Games.