The return of monkey life

monkeys and spider monkeys were once common in this area, too, but vanished after the Pan-American Highway was built nearby in the 1950s and most of the surrounding land was cleared for cattle raising. At Hacienda La Pacífica, however, an enlightened ranch owner chose to leave some strips of native trees growing. He used these as windbreaks to protect both cattle and their food crops from dry-season winds. In the process, the farmer unwittingly founded a unique laboratory for the study of monkeys. B Ken Glander, a primatologist from Duke University in the USA, is studying La Pacífica's monkeys in an effort to understand the relationship between howlers and regenerating forests at the edges of grazing lands. Studying such disturbed woodlands is increasingly important, because throughout much of the New World Tropics, these are the only forests left. In the 18th century, tropical dry forests covered most of Central America, but by the 1980s less than two percent remained undisturbed and less than one percent was protected.