Juvenile red uakaris on the Yavari River.

We aim to preserve the Yavari as the core refuge for rare red uakari monkeys (Cacajao calvus ucayalii) in Peru. The area, once little-visited, is now subject to extensive logging that is changing uakari habitats and increasing hunting in a way that has drastically reduced uakari populations in other areas. We need to see reductions in logging and specific protection of uakaris by local communities to halt the species’ decline. The area has low human density and exceptionally high biodiversity, but natural resources are threatened by extraction by foreign companies. It is of utmost urgency that we promote a system of communal management that will preserve the still largely intact area in a way benefiting local people.

Previous Rufford Small Grants helped facilitate the declaration of the Lago Preto Conservation Concession, reduced hunting of uakaris, and concluded that logging had low impact while only premium hardwoods were targeted. Now, timber extraction has increased and widened in scope. Our conservation education and community vigilance aims to reduce the hunting of primates alongside projects that develop sustainable incomes. We will associate the protection of uakaris with the beneficial sustainable development projects, using a program of conservation education and promotion. We aim to instil a long-term cultural value to uakaris through educating adults and children and disseminating locally the regional, national and international publicity and positive public opinion for conserving red uakari monkeys, much of this generated by the red uakari project’s media work following previous RSGs.

We will encourage alternative sources of income, by increasing participation in sustainable fishery schemes and active communal protection of animal populations. Protecting lucrative fisheries requires organised vigilance, which could simultaneously control hunting. People living on the Yavari-Miri have recently been given indigenous title to a swathe of land around their communities, we promote protection from overhunting by restricting access by outsiders, as people of other titled lands in Peru have done. Increases in other game animal populations will reduce pressure on red uakaris and other primates. This concept requires, training, motivation and forward thinking, which we aim to provide in this project.

Specific goals:

- Reduced hunting of uakaris and other primates

- Fewer families dependent on logging

- Greater awareness of national and international feeling for conservation on the Yavari

- Protection of mammals in the LPCC, providing employment opportunities in ecotourism and research assistance.

- Instil a cultural value to the uakari