EXPLORE WILD HOPE

In the past 40 years, golden lion tamarins became a symbol of conservation success when 150 zoos worldwide assisted a breeding and reintroduction program that brought their numbers in the wild from 200 to over 3700. Then, yellow fever jumped from humans to the primates and began to decimate their population—taking a third of the population in just two years.

Golden lion tamarins were nearly wiped out in the 1970s, but worldwide efforts by 150 zoos helped bring the species back from near-extinction. Today, local conservationists are expanding the forests in Brazil, and the wild population has grown from under 200 to now over 4800 tamarins!

Conservationists are hard at work protecting golden lion tamarins and other wildlife from extinction, and now you can help them from the comfort of your own home.

Zoos may be places where you can catch a glimpse of your favorite animal on a day out, but increasingly, they play an even more important role: as conservation institutions. 

One superpower species have to adapt to environmental changes is genetic diversity. Generally speaking, the bigger the population, the more genetically diverse it is. That’s because more individuals mean a wider variety of inherited traits, such as fur color or body size, giving them a bigger genetic toolbox to adapt to a changing environment. 

Many of the world’s most beloved frogs and amphibians are headed for extinction, but inside “The Ark” in Panama, some of those threatened species are given a fighting chance.

Deep in the Panamanian forest, researchers are looking for “lost frogs” — species believed to have gone extinct, but that may be holding on in the wild.

In the heart of Panama, scientists have created an artificial rainforest to protect endangered frogs from the worst wildlife disease ever recorded.

In conservation, an insurance population is a breeding group of endangered plants or animals kept in captivity to ensure that the species won’t go extinct, even if it disappears in the wild. Examples of insurance populations include the Panamanian golden frog and the golden lion tamarin of Brazil.

Dr. Gina Della Togna is the Executive Director of the Amphibian Survival Alliance and a Research Associate of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.