Scientists Try to Save Woolly Monkeys from Extinction … by Training Them to Be Wild Again

By Mónica Alejandra Ramírez, Universidad de los Andes; Manuel Lequerica Tamara, University of Sydney; Pablo Stevenson, Universidad de los Andes | December 15, 2018 11:43am ET

Colombia's Andes Mountains used to be loaded with wildlife, including South America's sole bear species, the spectacle bear, and the mountain tapir, which lives only in the world's highest altitudes.

You couldn't walk a mile in the jungle without seeing a woolly monkey – big, agile and charismatic primates with powerful long tails.

Now, the species is hard to spot. Over the past 50 years, habitat loss, poaching and smuggling for adoption as pets have all decimated Colombia's woolly monkey populations. Andean woolly monkeys are at risk of extinction in the next century, scientists say. They have already disappeared entirely in some parts of Colombia.

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