The Great Monkey Rescue: Saving the Golden Lion Tamarins (Sandra Markle's Science Discoveries)

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Summary: The story begins with a female golden lion tamarin trying to find a place to start a family. She’s rejected by groups of tamarins until she finally comes to the edge of the forest and realizes she has nowhere else to go. The narrative then moves to a look at the last few decades of human efforts to save this endangered Brazilian species. So much of the tamarins’ habitat has been destroyed that the animals were in danger of extinction. Tamarins in zoos weren’t breeding much, and if they did, the babies usually did not survive. Studying how the animals live in the wild led to greater success with zoo breeding programs, but challenges remained on how to introduce animals back into the rainforests. Slowly, over many years, scientists learned more about the golden lion tamarins and their environment, so that today the outlook for these animals looks positive. Includes a timeline, glossary, additional resources, and index. 48 pages; grades 4-7.Pros: Packed with information, this book is written so engagingly that it’s hard to put down. Plus it has a happy ending.Cons: The tamarins’ situation still seems somewhat tenuous.

A young eighteen-month-old female golden lion tamarin "is searching for a mate with whom she can start a family group." Like many animals, she listens carefully to the calls of others in her species. Perhaps she can find someone to mate with, but it's not all that easy for a lone female to find a mate. Whenever she approaches a family group, "the families stop, get quiet, and stare." The breeding female in each group is far from welcoming and drives her off. "Chuck-chuck-chuck!" It's obvious that there will be no home for her in any established family group.One would think the golden lion tamarins would embrace her, but on the contrary, "a family group usually accepts and supports only one breeding female." Eventually this female in search of a mate will find that she will have no mate, there will be no babies in her future, and she will be forever on the run. The golden lion tamarins once had almost unlimited territory to roam in search of a mate to create their own family group. In the 1500s the Brazilian Atlantic Forest began to shrink as "more of the forest was cut down to make way for roads, cities, and towns."The range available to the golden lion tamarins continued to shrink until less than "10 percent of Brazil's Atlantic Forest" remained. Even at that, little of the forest held the optimum conditions for the tamarins to form the much needed family groups in order to ensure survival of their species. In fact, "by the early 1960s, scientists estimated only about two hundred remained in the wild." It was an alarming situation, but what could be done to help them? Zoos in the United States soon learned that trying to get tamarins to reproduce in captivity was futile.The key lay in carefully observing the behaviors, reproductive and otherwise, of the golden lion tamarins. Devra Kleiman began to carefully research the situation. "Chuck-chuck-chuck!" Something had to be done and soon if the species were to survive. No, the golden lion tamarins didn't live in large groups, instead "they live in families." One problem solved, but many more obstacles lay ahead before survival do the golden lion tamarins would survive. In this book you learn many, many interesting facts about the golden lion tamarins and the people who tried to save them.This is an amazing book about the rescue of the golden lion tamarins that will mesmerize the reader. For quite some time I've been a fan of the work of Sandra Markle. This book, as with many I've read by her, is very well-written and well-researched. The story of the rescue if the golden lion tamarins is not only fascinating, but exciting. The layout is eye-popping with full color photographs of the tamarins along with a map and numerous informative sidebars. In the back of the book is an index, glossary, an author's note, a Timeline (1960s to 2014), and additional recommend book and website resources to explore.Audience: Ages 9 to 12Audience: Grades 4 to 6This book courtesy of the publisher.

What a great book with a happy outcome for one of the many endangered animals in the world. The Golden Tamarin was becoming endangered due to shrinking habitat. A group of scientists studied them in the wild, then the zoo to see why they were not breeding. The zoos began to change the way they were housing and raising the Golden Tamarins and they began to reproduce. They eventually released some into the wild but they could not survive. Once they mated with wild Tamarins that had been released into their breeding grounds they were successful in their survival as well as mating, having young that lived and families that grew and survived. The reforestation projects they took on to build the forest bridges was ingenious and led to the projects success. A feel good book for anybody interested in how to help endangered species to live and thrive.