Species of the Day: Pied Tamarin

The Pied Tamarin or Brazilian Bare-faced Tamarin, Saguinus bicolor, is a small monkey endemic to the Brazilian Amazon, and is classified as ‘Endangered’ on the IUCN Red List of Threatened SpeciesTM. It occurs largely within and around the city of Manaus, in the heart of the Amazon basin, and has one of the smallest ranges of any primate.

The expansion of Manaus has reduced much of the species’ habitat to mere fragments which Geographical range are disappearing rapidly, destroyed by people in search of land and by land-use planning www.iucnredlist.org that fails to take environmental needs into account. Tamarins migrating from one tiny patch of www.durrell.org forest to another are often electrocuted by power cables or are run over whilst crossing roads. Help Save Species www.arkive.org Translocation of these primates to safer patches of forest is now being implemented to help conserve this species. Seven potential conservation areas for Pied Tamarins have been identified. These areas require protection, as well as the creation of forest corridors to connect them, in order to secure the future of this species in the wild.

On 18-29 October, officials will gather at the tenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP10), in Nagoya, Japan, to agree how to

tackle biodiversity loss. The production of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™ is made possible through the IUCN Red List Partnership: Species of the Day IUCN (including the Species Survival Commission), BirdLife is sponsored by International, Conservation International, NatureServe and Zoological Society of London.