WASHINGTON (AP) – Biologist Carlos Ruiz has spent a quarter of a century running to save the golden lion puppets, the charismatic long-bred monkeys of Brazil’s Atlantic rainforest.
Thanks to painstaking reforestation efforts, the population of these endangered monkeys was steadily growing until an outbreak of yellow fever hit Brazil in 2018, wiping out a third of the tamarins. Undeterred, Ruiz’s team devised an ambitious new experiment: This spring, they would start vaccinating many of the remaining wild monkeys.
Enter the coronavirus, which now hinders critical painting of endangered species and habitats around the world.
First, members of Ruiz’s team exposed to the virus had to be quarantined. Then the government closed national parks and protected areas to both the public and researchers in mid-April, effectively barring scientists from the reserves where tamarins live.
“We don’t have a chance to save the species,” said Ruiz, president of the nonprofit Golden Lion Tamarin. “We hope that weArray … we can still do our homework before a wave of yellow fever arrives.”
Although scientists adhere to government guidelines, they know that others who intend to illegally exploit tropical forests still enter the parks because several motion-activated study chambers have been destroyed.
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A monkey legs in a tree in the Chinko Nature Reserve, Central African Republic. (Courtesy of African Parks)
Around the world, resources diverted from pandemic efforts have opened up opportunities for illegal land logging and poaching. Closures have also derailed ecotourism, which budgets for many environmental projects, from the rainforests of South America to the African savannahs.
“Scientists and environmentalists have already faced disruptions due to primary global disasters, such as an earthquake or a coup in a country,” said Duke University ecologist Stuart Pimm, founder of the nonprofit Saving Nature. “But I can’t think of another time when almost every single country on the planet has faced the effects of the same wonderful disaster at once.”
In Guatemala, indigenous communities that track tropical forests are suffering from involving one of the worst chimney seasons in two decades, while government resources to fight chimneys are faithful to the pandemic.
“Ninety-nine percent of those fires are across people, and it’s basically done intentionally to open an area to illegal livestock farming,” said Erick Cuellar, deputy director of an alliance of networking organizations within Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve called the Community Association. Petén Forestry.
A rhino at the Majete Wildlife Reserve, Malawi. (Courtesy of African Parks)
Indigenous peoples are stepping up their activities as volunteer firefighters, but now they have dual demand: closed borders have reduced their source of income from sustainably exploited forest exports, such as palm leaves sold for floral compositions.
“Tropical forests are rich in biodiversity, so we’re wasting rare flora and fauna,” said Jeremy Radachowsky, Mesoamerican’s director at the nonprofit Wildlife Conservation Society. “The scenario is different in the country, however, the reduced application of environmental legislation is not an unusual concern.”
In Nepal, forest-related crimes, such as illegal logging, have more than doubled since the closure began, five parks housing endangered Bengal tigers, according to the government and the World Wildlife Fund.
In many African countries, wildlife tourism provides a vital source of income to parks where vulnerable species such as elephants, lions, rhinos and giraffes live.
A cheetah at the Majete Wildlife Reserve, Malawi. (Courtesy of African Parks)
But after the coronavirus coup, “the entire foreign tourism sector virtually closed overnight in March,” said Peter Fearnhead, executive director of African Parks, a nonprofit that manages 17 parks and national spaces in 11 countries.
“We’ve noticed that $7.5 million has been erased from our benefits account for the year,” he said, adding that ecotourism next year may only return to a portion of the previous levels.
While offering must-have maintenance and patrol guards to deter potential poachers, fearnhead’s team lowers prices by organizing Zoom meetings and also contacting potential foreign donors.
“A domain that is not actively controlled will be lost,” he said.
Jennifer Goetz, an online co-founder who provides data on moral packages, said many safari operators in Africa expect some profit and urge consumers to postpone their bookings.
In a survey of Your African Safari operators, nearly two-thirds said most of their bookings had been postponed, not cancelled.
A black rhino in Liwonde National Park, Malawi. (Courtesy of African Parks)
Tropical biologist Patricia Wright points out that conservation is not a task that can be abandoned for a while and then resumed “because it depends a lot on relationships with other local people and communities.”
Wright is a primatologist at Stony Brook University who has spent three decades building a program to examine Madagascar’s lemurs, large-eyed primates that only live in the wild on the island.
Her team expects no tourism revenue — a large chunk of its operating budget — through at least the end of the year, although she’s keen to keep her more than 100 staffers employed during difficult times.
For now, the plan is to produce virtual safaris and videos about Madagascar to sell to tour operators and schools looking for clinical content online.
“We have to pass this year,” he says.
Associated Press Aniruddha Ghosal contributed from New Delhi.
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