ABSTRACT
There is little doubt that the earth’s biodiversity and ecological systems are gravely threatened. For example, in 2010 the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimated that 16.1 million hectares of forest was lost per year globally in the 1990s, and the majority of this was lost in the tropics (15.2 million ha/year). Such large numbers are hard for me to comprehend, but this is about the size of the state of Florida. The conservation situation with respect to primates is similarly very grim, if not worse. Approximately half of the nearly 600 species and subspecies of primates living today are in danger of going extinct. In fact, one subspecies in West Africa, Miss Waldron’s red colobus, may already be extinct. For the last two decades, I have studied what I would argue is the only viable population remaining of another endangered species of red colobus monkey (Procolobus rufomitratus) at Kibale National Park, Uganda, where my wife and I work.
