
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, February 19, 1991                   TAG: 9102190389
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

ZOO'S RARE MONKEY SURVIVES RETURN TO WILD, EXPERT SAYS

Rare monkeys from the capital's National Zoo are surviving in a distant Brazilian forest, showing that the return of endangered species to the wild can help save them from extinction, a researcher says.

The project is one of 135 programs involving the release of rare animals around the world, and the effort also helps to preserve their wilderness homes, said Benjamin Beck, associate director of the zoo.

"If we can save the golden-lion tamarin, that implies we have saved a forest ecosystem," Beck told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science on Monday.

The National Zoo directs an international network of zoos in the breeding of the golden-lion tamarins - small, bright orange monkeys with manes and faces like tiny lions, Beck noted.

Eighty-nine of them have been returned to Brazil's Atlantic coastal forest since 1984, said Beck, one of the program's directors. The animals are found nowhere else in the world.

Thirty-five released tamarins have survived, giving birth to 51 more and helping raise the total population of the nature reserve to about 400, Beck said.

Along the way, researchers have learned that putting the animals through a tough "boot camp" to teach them the rigors of living in the wild wasn't paying off, Beck said.

"It is better to reintroduce them cold turkey and support them intensively until they learn how to survive," he said.

Among the most advanced programs around the world are the tamarin project, U.S. projects to return peregrine falcons and red wolves to the wild, and an effort to restore the Arabian oryx, a kind of antelope, to Oman in the Middle East, Beck said.

"It seems clear that reintroduction will in some cases be useful to increase the numbers and genetic diversity of wild populations," Beck said. "But we can't yet be wildly enthusiastic."

Only about one-third of such reintroductions have succeeded, he said, and they are expensive.

The return of each golden-lion tamarin costs $23,000, not including the costs of raising it in the zoo, he said. A program to breed the black-footed ferret for return to the wild is costing $1 million per year, he said.

by CNB