Based on ethical, theoretical and practical concerns, community-based conservation projects have developed over the past 2 decades as alternatives to traditional protected areas. Recent criticisms of such programmes by biologists and social scientists involve a debate on who should manage our natural resources. Such criticisms have focused on large integrated conservation and development projects (ICDPs) and have largely ignored the successes of small community conservation projects. Practitioners of ICDPs have also been disappointed with the results of their projects and are seeking answers from ICDP failures. Two important differences separate community conservation projects and ICDPs and have led to the success of the smaller projects: (1) community conservation projects see local rural people as the solution to habitat degradation whereas ICDPs see them as the problem, (2) the scale of the smaller projects is at the community level but can use the same methods regionally, whereas ICDPs are large in scale and cost. We discuss, from a practitioner’s viewpoint, the strengths that contribute to the successes of community conservation projects, including actually functioning at the community level, creating an empowered community group to carry on the social sustainability of the project, continuous basic level funding, and the importance of monitoring.
ABSTRACT. The geographic range of the black howler, Alouatta pigra in Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize was investigated by travelling through and visiting 65 locations within or close to the expected range. The existence of the species was noted through first hand observations or was documented by talking with residents and knowledgeable people in the area. Observations were made on captive animals as well. All sites and probable sites of A. pigra were noted to be under 1,300 ft in altitude and in areas with a mean annual temperature above 25~ and a mean annual rainfall over 1,000 mm per year. This area coincides with tropical rain forest areas, including both tropical evergreen and semievergreen rain forests. A. pigra was most plentiful in riverine areas which showed flooding for some part of the year. Two areas of possible sympatry with A. palliata were noted. In all cases, the troop sizes of A. pigra were extremely small, under ten individuals, and infants could easily be sexed, in contrast to A. palliata which is known to occur in troops of 15-18 and is difficult to sex at an early age.Finally, a very gross method for population estimation from searching time emerged from the study.
ABSTRACT. Adulterous breeding between a female howling monkey (Alouatta pigra) of one troop with a male of an adjacent troop occurred despite territorial defense between the two troops. The specific behaviors are described as well as a synopsis of daily events which occurred between the female and two males from adjacent troops. A discussion of how this interaction and the behavior patterns relate to what is known about breeding in howler monkeys and related species follows.
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