HOWLERS DOWN: A female howler (Alouatta palliata) peers down from the canopy in a Nicaraguan forest.HAL BRINDLEY
In late September, Kimberly Williams-Guillén, an assistant professor at the University of Washington Bothell and a conservation scientist for the Nicaraguan environmental NGO Paso Pacífico, received a report that a handful of howler monkeys (genus Alouatta) had been found dead at an ecoresort in Nicaragua. Bizarrely, the monkeys showed no signs of trauma or disease. “They seemed to be in fairly good condition,” she recalls.
Over the next couple of months, Williams-Guillén and her colleagues continued to receive news that howler monkeys were dying. Then, around mid-January, the reports really started to flood in. Landowners, farmers, and other members of local communities in southwestern Nicaragua were all finding dead howler monkeys. Soon, the researchers began hearing of howler monkeys dying in certain areas of Ecuador ...
