In honor of Earth Day, I thought I share a couple pictures from my beautiful forest. The first is of a female spider monkey feeding, and the second is the roots of my favorite ficus tree. Both represent some of the beauty and wonder of the rainforests that we need to conserve. Over the time that I have been doing research in Costa Rica, the status of black-handed (also known as Central American) spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi) has declined from vulnerable to endangered. This is likely due to the reduction of habitat, because spider monkeys need large tracts of forest, and are one of the indicators of a large, healthy forest (the forests, in turn rely on spider monkeys for the dispersal of seeds). We need to intensify efforts to conserve and protect tropical forest habitats, if we want to continue to live in a world that can sustain these, and other, beautiful animals in the wild.
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