Andréia Martins’ dedication of 40 years to GLT care

By Kara Arundel, a Save the Golden Lion Tamarin board member and career journalist.

Field experts monitor the golden lion tamarins using an antenna, held here by Andréia Martins in 2021, which uses radio telemetry to communicate with collars worn by the monkeys.

Growing up in Silva Jardim near Rio de Janeiro City, Brazil, Andréia Martins never imagined a career helping to conserve one of the country’s most threatened animals — the golden lion tamarin. Although she lived near the Atlantic Forest that serves as the only natural habitat of the tiny red-gold monkey, she had never seen one when she was young.

Instead, she was planning to grow up to be a teacher. In high school, however, Martins began volunteering for an international effort to research golden lion tamarins and their conservation situation. Part of that work included visiting nearby cities and rural areas to educate local residents and school children about the endangered animal. 

Soon after, in 1984, she joined the Golden Lion Tamarin Conservation Project’s Reintroduction team, which had the ambitious goal of bringing golden lion tamarins — born in zoos across the globe — to live in the Brazilian forest. The goal of this effort was to halt the species’ expected path toward extinction by increasing the wild-born population of golden lion tamarins.

Under Martins’ management, the GLT populations in the wild increased by more than 40%. Now, nearly 40 years after the reintroduction efforts began, Martins continues her work with GLTs as the Meta team coordinator for Associação Mico-Leão-Dourado. Also known as AMLD, the Brazilian-based non-profit works with its sister organization, U.S.-based Save the Golden Lion Tamarin (SGLT) to protect golden lion tamarins and their forest habitat.

In this profile, Martins and others reflect on the circumstances that made the reintroduction efforts so successful and what challenges continue to threaten the species.

On seeing golden lion tamarins for the first time decades ago and deciding to dedicate her life in care of these animals, Martins said, “Honestly, I went there and saw the monkeys and said ‘Oh, this is what I want to do.’” 

Repopulating GLTs in the wild

In the 1980s, the monitoring of the reintroduced golden lion tamarins and their offspring was critical to understanding their behaviors and refining protocols for the reintroduction program and management of the wild monkeys. 

Martins, who moved from a volunteer position to a full-time role in the golden lion tamarin reintroduction program, displayed a natural talent for the field work, as well as astute skills with data collection and analysis, said scientists working with Martins and others during that time. 

Benjamin Beck, a founding director of SGLT and a comparative psychologist specializing in animal cognition and biodiversity conservation, said Martins’ “calm and empathetic” leadership style complimented her devotion to the animals. 

“She also could blithely tip-toe on even skinny logs when crossing streams, carrying telemetry equipment, monkeys, and a bulky backpack,” Beck said, adding that Martins could remember the names and parentage of 200 monkeys at any one time.

To keep track of individual golden lion tamarins, scientists outfitted the animals with small radio collars. Martins and others would go to the forest every day to find the animals through the telemetry receivers that would detect signals sent by the animal’s collars. They would also monitor the animals behaviors and share that information with scientists and animal caregivers located across the globe. They also watched for threats of disease and hunting.
Martins said the hardest part of this work was convincing farmers to allow the golden lion tamarins to be on their properties. As the population of GLTs grew as more offspring survived and thrived in the wild, additional connected forest areas were needed to accommodate genetic diversification for healthy reproduction.

“We worked very hard,” to keep the animals healthy, Martins said. For the zoo-born GLTs that were introduced into the wild, “they had to learn how to do things in the forest. We needed to teach them a little bit how to survive but their babies born in the forest, it’s easy for them to be wild.”

In 1988, Martins became the reintroduction field coordinator and head of the monitoring team, during a time when women were rare in such management positions and when most men were reluctant to even enter the forest without a gun, Beck said. 

From left to right, Jadir Ramos, Andréia Martins, Ademilson de Oliveira and Elisamã Moraes, pictured herein 2019, comprise the field team that monitors the golden lion tamarins.

James Dietz, a conservation biologist and founding director of both AMLD and SGLT, said Martins’ devotion to the animals, her field instincts and connections in the community have been invaluable to efforts to protect the species. As the golden lion tamarin population grew, she would bring farmers, school children and local residents to the forest to show them the silky-haired monkeys they were helping to protect. 

“She’s respected by absolutely everybody,” Dietz said.

The reintroduction of GLTs lasted until 2001. The reintroduction program resulted in the creation of 29 privately owned local conservation reserves and a federal biological reserve. 

Martins proudest moment in her career was when the 1,000th golden lion tamarin was born in the wild in the 1990s. Since the 1980s, the number of GLTs in the wild increased from a few hundred to about 3,700 in 2014.

In 2003, GLTs were upgraded from critically endangered to endangered by the International Union of Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species.

This progress is due to the many scientists and field workers, partnerships of local Brazilian landowners and community organizations, government agencies, the about 165 zoos worldwide that maintain golden lion tamarins, and generous donors who support this important work.

Continuing efforts to save species

Even as the wild population of golden lion tamarins grew, Martins said the field and advocacy work continued. “We were everywhere talking about golden lion tamarins,” said Martins, who over the years participated in two internships at the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington, D.C. and completed a degree in biology at the University Salgado de Oliveira in Brazil.

That continuing dedication to the golden lion tamarin — and the lessons learned over years of field work and global partnerships — would be invaluable as the species faced the devastating loss of a third of its population in 2017 and 2018 due to yellow fever.

Those losses are still difficult for Martins to discuss.

As those working with the animals grew alarmed at the disease’s impact on the population, a worldwide effort was enacted to halt fatalities through a vaccination program that was both risky and promising. By carefully diluting the yellow fever vaccination for humans, scientists were able to develop protocols for administering vaccinations to the wild golden lion tamarins. As of March 2023, 328 golden lion tamarins have been vaccinated against yellow fever.

This is the first time a non-human primate species has been vaccinated against yellow fever and the campaign could serve as a model to protect other wild animals against deadly diseases. The golden lion tamarin’s yellow fever vaccinations have proved to be safe and highly effective, providing life-time immunity for the small monkeys as it does for humans. The goal is to ultimately vaccinate 500 golden lion tamarins.

Dietz said if there ever needed to be another reintroduction program, Martins would be essential in those efforts. “I’m sure golden lion tamarins would be extinct now had we not done that reintroduction, so you could say she saved the species – she and her colleagues she worked with kept them from extinction,” he said.

Andréia Martins carries the Olympic Torch in the name of Associação Mico-Leão-Dourado (Golden Lion Tamarin Association) through the city of Rio Bonito in 2016.

Martins says she wants people to understand it’s important to respect and take care of the environment so that animals and people continue to survive and be healthy.

Martins is the author of about 10 articles and book chapters and has represented AMLD in a variety of professional congresses, synopsis and short courses. She and her team received the Disney Conservation Hero Award in 2011 and in 2013, she was nominated for the United Nations Forest Hero Award. She is known as the world’s most experienced and capable lion tamarin field biologist.