GLT Day 2023
Save the Golden Lion Tamarin and Associação Mico-Leão-Dourado are grateful to everyone around the world who helped celebrate this year’s Golden Lion Tamarin Day on Aug. 2, 2023. The day is dedicated to honoring this endangered monkey and in appreciation for conservation efforts on its behalf.
All SGLT and AMLD activities this year were conducted online — in English and in Portuguese — and included a virtual live panel discussion with the AMLD population management team about a recent survey of the GLT population in the largest remaining habitat fragments in the Atlantic Forest in Brazil.
“The 2023 GLT Day was truly an international event,” said Lou Ann Dietz, president of SGLT. “We were delighted to have so many supporters and partners celebrating their love of GLTs and their contributions to the species' conservation."
SGLT and AMLD asked a few of partner zoo and aquarium organizations to highlight their favorite aspect of working with golden lion tamarins. These videos were shared on our social media sites during the GLT Day celebrations. You can view each of their clips on the AMLD YouTube channel:
Belo Horizonte Zoo – Brazil
Zoos across the world also held special events, such as crafts, games and fundraisers on GLT Day. For example, Ystad Djurpark in Sweden had craft activities, keeper talks and a fun GLT hide-seek game that involved kids and their parents. Zoo Miami in Florida set up a raffle near their primate exhibit and talked to guests about GLTs. They raised more than $700 for GLT conservation. Zoo Frankfurt in Germany also had several craft activities, games, keeper talks, a fundraising table and served GLT shaped cookies to their visitors. They raised $390 for GLT conservation.
Additionally, the festivities included the announcement of winners of the 2023 Golden Lion Tamarin Day Photo Contest. This year’s contest featured three categories: pictures of a solo (1) golden lion tamarin; pictures of two (2) or more golden lion tamarins (family group); and pictures of doppelgangers, which means pictures of golden lion tamarin(s) that were matched by a human(s) imitating the same pose, gesture and faces as the animal(s).
The winning photographers and the zoos where they took the photos are:
Solo photos
1st Place — Jasmine Mead, Yorkshire Wildlife Park, England
2nd Place — Kris Huybrechts, Apenheul Zoo, Netherlands
3rd Place — Veronica Schmidt, Honolulu Zoo, United States
Group photos
1st Place — Kris Huybrechts, Apenheul Zoo, Netherlands
2nd Place — Tony Bates, London Zoo Regents Park, England
3rd Place — Łukasz Panek, Orientarium Zoo Łódź, Poland
Doppelganger photos
1st Place — Ashleigh Nolder, Yorkshire Wildlife Park, England
2nd Place – Jen Hennessy, Roger Williams Park Zoo, United States
Congratulations to all our winners and thank you to all who participated in the contest. The winners will have trees planted in their names in the GLT habitat near Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. The planting and maintenance of trees supports the connection of GLT populations living in isolated blocks of their forest habitat
To see more photos from the 2023 GLT Day Photo Contest, visit us on social media at @SaveTheGLT and Facebook.com/saveglts.