Muriqui House: conservation management to support the recovery of the northern muriqui Brachyteles hypoxanthus in Ibitipoca, Minas Gerais, Brazil
FABIANO R. DE MEL O * 1 , 2 ,FERN ANDA P. TABAC OW2 , 3 P RISCILA MARIA P ERE I RA 3 ,MAR CE LL O S. NER Y 3
L EANDR O S. MORE I RA 2 , 3 ,ÉRIKA PROCÓ PIO TOS TES TEI XE IRA 4
DANILO S IMO N I N I -T EIXEIRA 2 , 5 ,MÔNI C A VALENÇA-MONTE NE GR O 2 , 6 KAREN B. S TRIER 2 , 7 and LEANDRO J ERUSALINS K Y 2 , 6
Abstract Ensuring the demographic and genetic viability of small populations of threatened primates requires a range of management approaches. Here we describe a novel mixed in situ and ex situ management project that was developed to restore a population of the Critically Endangered northern muriqui Brachyteles hypoxanthus. This isolated population, located in Ibitipoca, Lima Duarte, Minas Gerais, Brazil, had declined to two adult males and would have gone extinct without intervention. A first attempt at in situ management in 2017 involved the translocation of a solitary female from another region, but this female did not associate or interact with the males and disappeared after 9 months. We thus in- itiated a second and ongoing ex situ management project that involved constructing a complex consisting of a large, open-air enclosure abutting a small patch of forest sur- rounded by an open area in the process of restoration, all of which is protected by electric fencing. The entire area within the fencing is called Muriqui House. The two Ibitipoca males and two solitary, wild females from another location were captured and released into the enclosed part of Muriqui House between March 2019 and January 2020 and into the forested part of Muriqui House in February 2020. The birth of an infant in this group in November 2020 and the acceptance by the group of a third female translocated from another area in January 2021 demon- strate the potential of this approach for the recovery of this isolated population, with positive implications for the conservation of the species.
*Corresponding author,
frmelo@ufv.br 1Universidade Federal de Viçosa, Viçosa, Minas Gerais, Brazil 2IUCN Species Survival Commission Neotropical Primate Specialist Group 3Muriqui Institute of Biodiversity, Caratinga, Minas Gerais, Brazil 4Instituto Estadual de Florestas–Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais,
Brazil 5Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz, Ilhéus, Bahia, Brazil 6Centro Nacional de Pesquisa e Conservação de Primatas Brasileiros, Instituto
Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade, Cabedelo, Paraíba, Brazil 7Department of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, USA
Received 2 November 2023. Revision requested 17 January 2024. Accepted 28 March 2024. First published online 21 October 2024.
Keywords Atlantic forest, Brachyteles hypoxanthus, captive breeding, conservation action plan, Neotropical primates, northern muriqui, social behaviour, translocation
scales (Butti et al., 2002; Estrada et al., 2017, 2018; Fernández et al., 2022). Habitat loss and fragmentation re- sult in small, isolated populations that will become inviable in the near future (Shaffer, 1981; Brito, 2009). In these cases, management programmes involving translocations and re- introductions of individuals or groups are needed to estab- lish the genetic and demographic variation necessary for populations to persist (Kierulff et al., 2007). Here we describe a conservation management initiative
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for the northern muriqui Brachyteles hypoxanthus,a Critically Endangered primate endemic to the Atlantic Forest of south-eastern Brazil. Approximately 1,000 indivi- duals are known to occur in 12 populations, only half of which comprise .100 individuals (Strier et al., 2017; Melo et al., 2021). The other, smaller populations vary in size, with the smallest in the Mata dos Luna, a forest remnant of c. 40 ha at Ibitipoca in Lima Duarte, Minas Gerais, Brazil (Fig. 1). In 2002 therewere 10 individuals in amixed-sex group in
the northern muriqui population in the Ibitipoca forest (Oliveira, 2003; Nogueira et al., 2010). By 2015 only two adult males remained. Northern muriquis can be individu- ally identified by their natural markings, and the Ibitipoca males were assigned unique codenames (BER-IB, LUN- IB) to distinguish them and their population of origin. The isolation of this population from other northern muri- qui populations precluded any possibility of female recruit- ment without intervention. Thus, following the Brazilian National Action Plan for the Conservation of Muriquis (Jerusalinsky et al., 2011), we started a management project with both in situ and ex situ management components, to preserve what remained of the genetic diversity of this population.
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited. Oryx, 2024, 58(6), 715–719 © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605324000644
he destruction of tropical forests is one of the main threats to primate survival at both local and global
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