Hope for the critically endangered northern muriqui monkey
A new grant is providing $1 million over five years to go directly toward the conservation of Brazil’s peaceful primate population, and UW–Madison researcher Karen Strier will be leading the effort.
When Karen Strier started researching Brazil’s northern muriqui monkeys in the ’80s, she discovered that they were a primate anomaly. At the time, most of what was known about primates came from research in Africa and Asia, studying species that were thought to more obviously offer scientific insight on human evolution. So, when she discovered a peaceful society of monkeys where aggression was rare, male monkeys stayed in their kin groups, females were independent and hugs were common — this went against every anthropological norm she had studied before.
“They got this nickname in literature and the press as being ‘hippie monkeys’ and became a symbol of peaceful society,” says Strier, a Vilas Research Professor and the Irven DeVore Professor of Anthropology. “That’s a really different example from what we saw with chimpanzees and baboons, where males were bigger than females, there’s an aggressive nature and they had warfare.”
Unfortunately, these peace-loving muriquis are critically endangered. In the more than 40 years that Strier’s been studying them, she’s watched the population decline, surge and now decline again. The group she studies started with just a small population of 50 animals, then in 2015 the population peaked at 356 individuals. Drought, disease and predation in the last decade have all contributed to the challenges for this species, which are endemic to Brazil.
“[The population loss] was a real wake-up call for me,” Strier says. “Even though the habitat was being protected — it wasn’t being selectively logged, there was no hunting — these small forest fragments and the animals that survived in them were still really vulnerable to things like disease and changing climate.”
The Phoenix Species Project — a $200 million commitment from Re:wild and the Bezos Earth Fund — is offering hope to Strier and her furry research subjects. The project will provide $1 million over the course of five years to go directly toward the conservation of northern muriqui monkeys, with Strier leading the effort as the focal point and species recovery manager.
“Dr. Karen Strier has been working with muriquis since 1983, and almost everything we know about this species comes from her project and leadership,” says species recovery co-manager on the project and Strier’s former post doc Fabiano de Melo, who is also a professor of wildlife management at Viçosa Federal University and one of the vice chairs for IUCN SSC Primate Specialist Group. “Thinking about this moment and the importance of this grant, I can definitely say that it’s one of the most important steps for the northern muriqui conservation, in a crucial moment.”
More on the muriqui
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Because of Strier’s four decades of studying the northern muriqui monkeys, researchers have a deep understanding of the primates’ nature as well as the threats they face. This includes habitat loss, forest fragmentation, over predation, disease, climate change impacts and more.
Strier has also built connections with local governments, landowners and conservation groups, who are ready and willing to help the peace-loving monkeys.
“This project will be a keystone to the effective implementation of the strategies for muriquis, as part of the public policies for the species conservation,” says species recovery co-manager Leandro Jerusalinsky, who is head of the National Center for Research and Conservation of Primates and Xenarthrans (ICMBio/CPB) as well as deputy chair of the IUCN SSC Primate Specialist Group.
Strier sees this funding as a full-circle moment. She remembers the early years of realizing females were the independent ones in the monkey’s society — it was an unprecedented finding. Now that research will be used to create a conservation strategy, which will include assisted dispersal to help prevent genetic bottlenecking. This is an effort to help move isolated females to another group of muriquis to support mating and the birth of healthy new monkeys. Without her initial study, they wouldn’t have known to move the females or what time of year to do it.
“We could not have found a better person to lead the Muriqui Recovery Project than Karen Strier, whose scientific discoveries about the muriquis over the past 43 years have been the guiding force for their conservation,” says Russell A. Mittermeier, the chief conservation officer for Re:wild and chair of the IUCN Species Survival Commission Primate Specialist Group. “When I first introduced Karen to the animal back in 1982, we knew almost nothing about it. Now it is one of the best studied primate species in the world, and her study is one of the longest running continuous studies of any primate … There is an excellent opportunity for the recovery of this amazing animal.”