Female and male infants of Alouatta ululata.

Alouatta ululata or Guariba is an endangered species and endemic of northeastern Brazil. Its home range belongs to three Brazilian states, Ceará, Piauí and Maranhão. Moreover, Alouatta ululate home range mixes three important Brazilians biome, Caatinga, Cerrado and Amazon. Caatinga Howler Monkey is a species understudied and its main threats are habitat loss and poaching. However, it is a flagship species to the population.

The main direct conservation output of this project is find out the most important areas to the Caatinga howler monkey conservation. Therefore, will be built a distribution species model taking into consideration the environment factors that influence the distribution of populations (e.g. precipitation, land slope, vegetation cover and aridity index) to identify the regions where there is suitable natural habitat to the species. The resultant model will be related with a cost layer, it will consider population density, the distance of roads and land use (croplands and pastures). The obtained results will allow identify what percentage of the most important areas to Guariba conservation inside existing Brazilian conservation units. This will allow proposing measures for the conservation of the species taking into account the use and expansion of existing protected areas, as well as the suggestion for the creation of new conservation units.

The conservation strategies suggested by this project go through three levels: (1) pubic sphere: to submit to the government the most important identified areas for Caatinga howler monkey conservation, to raise awareness the rulers about the importance of maintaining these areas, and extends them where possible. (2) Community: conduct an awareness work with the population living in areas with suitable habitat for the species, to inform and educate residents about the importance of Guariba conservation by lectures in local community centers and schools, fixing posters and delivering T-shirts and hats. (3) Society: increase scientific knowledge and stimulate dialogue about the conservation of the species by the dissemination of the results of this study at universities and NGOs working in the conservation environment.

The project is going to be developed in Northeastern Brazil, with two acting line: the first one in Northwest of Ceará state, inside of the Caatinga biome. The second study area is localized in North of Piauí, a region of ecotone between three important Brazilian ecotones, Caatinga, Cerrado and Amazon. This region has a singular phytophysiognomy, result of these three biomes.