Conservation News 17
to the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, where it is restricted to the states of Paraná, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and the extreme south of Minas Gerais. The most north-western population in São Paulo state occurs in the Barreiro Rico Environmental Protection Area, a 30,142-ha area including the Barreiro Rico Ecological Station and seven other fragments with a total of 3,818 ha of forest. Intensive agricultural activities (sugar cane, eucalyptus, citrus) and pasture have significantly altered the landscape between the Tietê and Piracicaba Rivers, causing forest fragmentation. Yet despite these environmental changes, the Protection Area has a rich biodiversity and is home to five sympatric primates: the buffy tufted-ear marmoset Callithrix aurita, the brown-howler monkey Alouatta guariba, the black-fronted titi monkey Callicebus nigrifrons, the black-horned capuchin Sapajus nigritus and the southern muriqui Brachyteles arachnoides. The muriqui population at Barreiro Rico is considered a
top priority for the species because of its extreme geograph- ical location and isolation (Strier et al., 2017, PLOS One, 12, e0188922). The population was first estimated at 50–60 in- dividuals by Aguirre (1971, Academia Brasileira de Letras) and subsequent estimates recorded population growth dur- ing the 1970sto the early 2000s(Milton, 1984, International Journal of Primatology, 5, 491–514;Martins, 2005, Biodiversity and Conservation, 14, 2321–2329). However, in 2012 and 2018, two large fires destroyed parts of three forest fragments and oneentirefragment, reducing thesizeand quality ofthe forest. In a 2022 census commissioned by the Fundação Florestal (carried out by environmental consulting company Hileia ConsultoriaAmbiental) only 45 muriquiswere estimated to re- main,inanareaof 2,250 ha. These resultsmust be interpreted with caution because of the low rate of sightings. With funding from the Fundação do Amparo à Pesquisa
do Estado de Minas Gerais and Re:wild, and logistical sup- port from the Fundação Florestal do Estado de São Paulo, we used a drone equipped with an infrared and a colour camera to search for southern muriquis in the Barreiro Rico Environmental Protection Area during January–August 2024. In 127 flight hours covering 2,947 km we recorded only 12 southern muriquis, in two groups in two fragments: the Barreiro Rico Ecological Station, a federal conservation unit of 293 ha, and a private property of 926 ha. We noted other primate species including the black-horned capuchin Sapajus nigritus and brown howlermonkey Alouatta guariba in other fragments, suggesting that our failure to locate muriquis in these areas was not because of poor visibility or flight con- ditions. Our results highlight the precarious status of this unique Brachyteles arachnoides population and emphasize the urgent need for conservation and management actions to rescue it.
BEATRIZ ROBBI1 (
beatriz.robbi@
ufv.br), FABIANO RODRIGUES
DE MELO1 ,EDSON MONTILHA DE OLIVEIRA2 and KAREN B. STRIER3
Camera-trap image of Leopardus guigna on 21 May 2024, expanding its known range northwards.
Oryx, 2025, 59(1), 10–18 © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605324001856 1Universidade Federal de Viçosa, Viçosa, Minas Gerais,
Brazil. 2Fundação Florestal, São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil. 3University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, USA
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence CC BY 4.0.
Newrecord ofLeopardusguignain Chile expands its range northwards
The guiña Leopardus guigna is the smallest felid in the Americas. The species is categorized as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, with a restricted distribution limited to the central and southern regions of Chile, some off- shore islands and some areas of south-west Argentina. Two subspecies are recognized: Leopardus guigna tigrillo (in central and north-central Chile) and Leopardus guigna guigna (in south Chile and south-west Argentina). It inha- bits sclerophyll forests and Mediterranean matorral in its northern range, and temperate rainforest in its southern range in Chile (particularly Nothopagus spp. forest) and Andean Patagonia Forest in Argentina. Threats to the guiña include habitat loss and fragmentation, and direct persecution by people. Although some individuals of the Chilean endemic L.
guigna tigrillo have recently been reported in the Coquimbo region (Napolitano et al., 2020, Revista Chilena de Historia Natural, 93, 7), there are no previous records north of Cerro Palo Colorado. On 21 May 2024, during camera-trap surveys to monitor
carnivores, we recorded the species for the first time in Huentelauquén, in the Coquimbo region, in a native forest patch on the southern bank of the Choapa River. The site is close to agricultural crops and c. 300mfrom the Ramsar site Las Salinas de Huentelauquén. Although the diverse coastal ecosystems of this Ramsar site support a range of biodiver- sity, there are no previous records of the species in the area and this new record extends the range of L. guigna tigrillo
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