Wildlife Conservation Belize Project #52620

Saving manatees and monkeys in Belize

by Wildtracks

Project Report | May 22, 2023
Celebrating our partnerships

By Zoe Walker | Director

Tess and Toby - pool cleaning day

Wildtracks celebrating!

Since our last update, we have made a number of important steps forward, and are delighted to share these with you

In March, Wildtracks signed the updated Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Sustainable Development for management of Belize's Primate Rehabilitation Centre. We value the strong collaborative partnership that we have developed with the Belize Forest Department over the 30+ years since we first added wildlife rehabilitation to our conservation tool kit - and our commitment to the conservation of Belize's primates and other threatened species is still 100%!

We were also honoured to receive an award from the Forest Department in recognition of...“exceptional service, untiring effort, and continuous contribution to wildlife conservation and rehabilitation for the last thirty three years.” This deserves a ‘Congratulations’ to all of you - the Wildtracks Team - staff and volunteers, our other wildlife rehab and veterinary partners and our donor family over those 33 years who have been a part of building Wildtracks and ensuring that it has been able to provide support in the areas of wildlife conservation and rehabilitation.

The howler monkey census at our release site continues as part of our measures of success monitoring and evaluation, with the identification of 15 troops to date, and over 80 individual monkeys...Alisha and the survey team have taken photographs, GPS points, observed troop dynamics...and are starting to recognize individuals. Then there are the surprises, like the arrival of a mother with her tiny newborn. Each trip brings a new experience. Join Alisha as she documents her adventures in her blog:

Tracking in the wind - the howler monkey census at Fireburn

Manatees, too, have featured in the good news over the last three months. It was a pleasure to share a small part of our manatee rehab stories with the World Wildlife Fund, and we are delighted that they have highlighted our work on their website:

A wildlife rescue project that protects Belize's threatened seascapes and wildlife - one manatee at a time

We have also been successful in applying for a grant from the Belize Fund for a Sustainable Future towards strengthening management of manatees within protected areas, building capacity for manatee rehabilitation of the wildlife management authorities and for the upgrading of the Manatee Rehabilitation Centre building. Find out about the work that we have been doing towards manatee conservation in Belize, and will be doing under this project. We are celebrating by sharing our proposal video - enjoy!

Project Video: Helping Secure the Future for Belize's Iconic Manatees

Thank you for being a part of the Wildtracks story!!

Teek visits - an opportunity to check up on him

Sprout - our newest orphaned arrival

Links:

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Jan 23, 2023
Keeping the 'Wild' in Wildlife - The End Game

By Zoe Walker | Director

The Wildlife Rehabilitation activities are all focused on one goal - to get the animals, whether monkeys or manatees, back into the wild....

As part of our outreach activities, we recently presented at the Primate Society of Great Britain winter meeting, on 'Primate Rehabilitation and Release in Belize - A Model for Successful Reintroductions'. We are delighted to be able to share the video of the presentation with you!!

https://youtu.be/8LL8QvEnA7g

Our spider monkey releases, too, have been showcased in video by our partners, Twycross Zoo in the UK:

https://twycrosszoo.org/news/protecting-spider-monkeys-in-belize/

When we release howler monkeys, we invest in post-release monitoring to ensure we can track them from the moment of release for the first two months - almost every day. We watch as they establish their territories and settle in to being wild monkeys, and use the information we learn to inform our next releases. We then continue to check in on them to ensure they are doing well during their first year. After the initial five years, we assessed the population, with 85% of released monkeys being identified and doing well - and a further two turning up after the survey, taking the total to 95% survival in the first five years. A ten-year survey was planned, and postponed as a result of Covid-19, but we are now back in the field, ready to start the census of Fireburn howler monkeys, identifying the troops and plotting their territories.

Alisha Huotari, from the University of Salford, has joined us to lead the seven months of field survey work as part of her Masters Thesis. No stranger to Wildtracks, she has volunteered with the endangered Yucatan black howler monkeys at the Primate Rehabilitation Centre. She shares with us her initial thoughts as she starts the field work....

"This past month kicked off the first of many survey trips to Fireburn, the main release site for the Yucatan black howler monkeys that have passed through the primate rehabilitation process here at Wildtracks. Over the next seven months, I am going to be assessing the success of the rehabilitation and reintroduction of howler monkeys into the Fireburn Forest, part of the North-East Biological Corridor, here in Belize. Wildtracks has been releasing howler monkeys into the Fireburn Forests since 2011 through a carefully designed rehabilitation-reintroduction process, with 75 howler monkeys introduced into the area to date. Recent estimates of the population suggest there are now between 150 and 200 individuals. I am partnering with an experienced primate tracker, and will be in and out of the rainforest counting, tracking, and collecting data on the growing population.

This familiarization visit was about getting to grips with forest life. I have started to learn key tracking skills from the Wildtracks Post-Release Tracking Team, the basics of keeping safe in the tropical forest as well as testing out data collection. Before leaving, I was nervous and completely unsure of what to expect, but after months of talking about it and planning, it has happened. Well, what a welcome the howlers gave us! In the 5 days we spent in the forest we found 3 troops of howler monkeys, a total of 18 individuals. Hopefully many more will be found in the upcoming trips!

The forest is full of life…aside from monkeys, we spotted some huge tarantulas, a coati that I thought was a monkey (I’m going to have to work on my arboreal mammal identification!) and a glimpse of the beak of a toucan. This whirlwind of an experience has already taught me so much - including that taking pictures of monkeys is a lot harder than I was expecting! I’ve worked with some of these monkeys when they were in rehabilitation, as a Wildtracks Volunteer in the past - seeing and hearing these monkeys calling in the wild is better than I could have ever imagined! In so many ways it feels like I was always meant to be doing this and I can’t help thinking that little me would be so proud. I’m very much looking forward to seeing what the next year brings!"

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Sep 26, 2022
Arrivals and Departures

By Zoe Walker | Director

In the wild....

A fiery sunrise welcomes the day as we start out towards Runaway Creek Nature Reserve. The vehicle has a certain musky primate smell that increases the further we drive. In the back, we carry a special passenger...a beautiful, healthy endangered Yucatan black howler monkey, heading towards his future, back in the wild.

Most of our releases are as groups of well bonded individuals that have grown by together since arriving at Wildtracks. This individual, however, is being released on his own. He is a young adult male who has been pushed out of his natural habitat by forest clearance, and pushed into August Pine Ridge, a community in north-west Belize. Each year there are an increasing number of reports of howler monkeys entering villages after being forced out of their forests by forest clearance. Once in the villages, they face threats from dogs, from youths with sling shots and pellet guns and from vehicles as they come down and cross roads. Working with the Forest Department, Wildtracks responds to these cases, translocating the individuals to new locations once they have been screened for injuries and disease.

This individual is joining an isolated pair of wild female howlers that have been observed over the past months by our partners at Runaway Creek (The Foundation for Wildlife Conservation)...strengthening the population of this important large seed disperser in Belize's Maya Forest Corridor. After trekking to the release site, the kennel is placed under a suitable door, the kennel door is opened – and he is off, climbing a tree to reach the canopy and basking in the warm morning sunlight of freedom…

Checking up on him the next morning, the Runaway Creek post-release tracking team find him where they left him the evening before, settled back into the routine of a wild howler monkey - dozing in the sunlight, foraging for leaves in the canopy and moving lazily through the treetops. It may be a week or so before he feels comfortable enough to start howling again...proclaiming his presence in his new home, but he now has a future back in the wild.

Not all stories end as well as this one - earlier this year we received reports of TikTok videos showing a very small howler monkey being kept illegally as a pet. It can be frustrating trying to piece together where a monkey is being held from clues in videos such as this, but with the assistance of some amazing internet sleuths, he was finally tracked down - from the glimpse of a vehicle through a window, from the beer cases stacked in the corner, from the weeds growing in the yard...each new video brought more clues. However, each video also showed the gradual decline in the condition of the monkey as it was filmed climbing on curtains, picking up a lighted joint, drinking coffee, inhaling cigarette smoke and eating rice and beans. Baby howler monkeys are very delicate and cases like these are time sensitive.

The clues finally formed a complete picture - he was located and immediately confiscated by the Forest Department and then transported to Wildtracks, where critical care started. Skin on bones, lethargic..he was in a bad state and despite intensive care and attention, he didn't make it. A loss like this hits the entire team. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, we all feel the death deeply. The vet's necropsy report spoke of his 'compromised immune system from chronic malnutrition'.

95% of our stories have happy endings - the other 5% reminds us how fragile these lives are and how important the work is. Donations such as yours make a difference – the funds provide fuel for rescues, whether of monkeys or manatees, ensure we have medicine on site for emergency treatment that can save’s lives, provide enclosures, critical care incubators and equipment, purchase fruit, run awareness campaigns – the funds ensure the wildlife in our care has the best chance possible to return to the wild…so thank you once again for your support…we couldn’t achieve our successes without your support.

Sad departures....

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