We now have a baby white-faced monkey (carablanca) that had been confiscated by
local police. It had been fed a diet of human "junk food" and was terribly thin at the
time we received it. It is being watched closely and appears to be getting healthier.
The illegal practice of obtaining baby monkeys from the wild for sale in the pet trade
is particularly cruel. Poachers will locate a mother carrying a baby and shoot it out of its tree.
Assuming the baby survives the fall and was not also struck by the bullet (which happens quite often),
it gets pried out of its dead mother's arms and stuffed into a cramped container until caged for sale.
Few owners have any idea what a healthy diet is for these animals, and they are
deprived of the considerable space needed for normal physical and psychological
development. Even worse, they are usually deprived of social contact with others of
their kind. Monkeys, like humans, rely heavily on the nurturing and training of their
mothers and social interaction within a troupe. Captive animals usually develop into
vicious and neurotic individuals because of this deprivation. It will be challenging in
the months to come to see if we are able to successfully integrate this animal into our
local troupe of white-faced monkeys. They are generally quite territorial, and do not
readily accept new members into the troupe. We are cautiously optimistic that
things will turn out well for this one, but in the meantime, it has a lot of recovery
ahead of it. Next month we are hosting a meeting of the Centro Cientifico Tropical
(Tropical Science Center), a longstanding leader in conservation and sustainable
development programs in Costa Rica. They are a driving force in the organization of
the Bi-national Macaw Festival held near here or in nearby Nicaragua, which
raises awareness of the plight of the lapa verde (great green macaw) which has
suffered drastic population declines at the hands of agricultural deforestation in
northern Costa Rica. They are also behind an initiative to link all remaining forested
land in the region into a biological corridor between Costa Rica's Cordillera Central,
the volcanic mountainous spine of the country, and Nicaragua's Indio Maiz nature
reserve, just across the Rio San Juan from here. Known as the Corredor Biologico San
Juan-La Selva, it would provide a vital swath of habitat for thousands of species,
allowing natural migratory movements and flow of genetic material for populations
of animals now already isolated from each other or under threat of it from huge
agricultural clearings for banana and pineapple production. Our property and many
others will hopefully form a patchwork that one day completes this corridor.
Pura vida,
Kevin
Kevin
