Ecuador project empowers cacao farmers to save spider monkey habitat

When researchers arrived in Ecuador’s Esmeraldas province to document one of the most threatened animals on the planet, the brown-headed spider monkey, their initial plan was to simply carry out a census of its population in the ever-diminishing forest. Deforestation here on the north coast of Ecuador is driven by agriculture and logging. But during their research, primatologists Felipe Alfonso Cortés and Nathalia Fuentes realized that the problem ran much deeper, affecting not only the spider monkeys, but also the human inhabitants of the forest.

“It’s an area with isolated communities, where the state fails to provide basic needs. We saw their economic situation and understood the reasons why deforestation happens,” Cortés says.

These social and economic conditions didn’t allow the rural families to have a stable quality of life — not even enough to send their children to school — which in turn put pressure on community members to expand their farms to earn an income, or to join the logging industry for a fixed salary.

“It becomes the most convenient option. The state abandons the communities, and these timber companies jump in to ‘save’ them, appearing to support the communities, when in reality they are just pursuing their own interests,” Fuentes says. As a result, deforestation has increased over the last 30 years, according to Cortés and Fuentes.

So they started thinking of alternatives to conservation that would work just as well for the rural inhabitants of the area as for the spider monkeys, Ateles fusciceps fusciceps, a critically endangered and strictly tree-dwelling animal that’s increasingly being deprived of its forest habitat. In their search for a solution, the primatologists came across cacao, a crop the local farmers were already familiar with.

Creating an alternative for all

Cortés and Fuentes designed what they called a sustainable matrix model. “The families have forest on their land, which is home not only to spider monkeys but also to other [threatened] species like the jaguar [Panthera onca] and the great green macaw [Ara ambiguus],” Fuentes says. “We developed a link between forest conservation, livelihood of farming families, and cultivation of Ecuadorian fine-aroma cocoa, a variety which is in high demand across the world for its quality and aroma.”

The families were already skilled farmers, so the contribution of the biologists consisted of strengthening their skills in terms of post-harvest processing of the cacao, and searching for buyers who recognized the additional value of the product from forest conservation work. The model combines scientific research, environmental education and community strengthening to create empowered, strong and independent communities who play a key role in conserving their forests.

“This cacao has a lot of history behind it, because the farmers and we biologists have fulfilled our commitments and responsibilities, thanks to the socioenvironmental agreements that we developed together. We have also made sure that cacao purchasers participate in these agreements so the farmers are paid a living wage, and in return we vouch that they receive excellent quality cocoa,” Fuentes says.

In 2014, after two years of work, the Washu Project was born, focusing on primate conservation on the Ecuadorian coast, especially the brown-headed spider monkey and its habitat in the Chocó forest region. The project collaborates with local communities on fair trade, which incentivizes forest conservation.

Monkeys and the forest

The A. f. fusciceps has various names depending on the region in which it’s found, including spider monkey and bracilargo, meaning “long arms.” The Indigenous Chachi people of coastal Ecuador call it washu, from where the organization gets its name.

The brown-headed spider monkey, a subspecies of the black-headed spider monkey, is the most threatened primate in Ecuador, and among the 25 most threatened in the world. It’s categorized as critically endangered on both the IUCN Red List and Ecuador’s red book of threatened mammals; it’s also been included in Appendix II of CITES, the global wildlife trade convention, meaning its trade is strictly regulated.

The Washu Project estimates there are 350 of the spider monkeys distributed across 22 of the 32 sections of forest that were monitored until 2021 in the Manabi region. This is an important finding; at the beginning of the 2000s, the spider monkey population was estimated to be just 250.

The spider monkeys’ habitat is found in the northern and central parts of Ecuador’s coastal region, in patches of expansive forests. According to the Washu Project, the monkey became threatened due to changes in its habitat. Its diet consists of ripe fruit, for which it requires large and healthy forest areas to obtain sufficient food; a group of 30 monkeys, for example, occupies 90-400 hectares (220-990 acres).

“They need to move around the whole forest because the fruits aren’t distributed evenly, so in order to avoid competition, they do something called ‘fission-fusion’: they separate into small groups to look for fruits,” Fuentes says. “They have long-distance calls to meet up again, and when they find each other, they hug. It’s very beautiful and human-like behavior, and reminds us that we are also primates.”

These monkeys have elongated fingers that allow them to get around the forest very quickly. They also defecate 11 or 12 times a day, along journeys of up to 6 kilometers (nearly 4 miles), which makes them brilliant seed dispersers. “They are capable of swallowing huge seeds without chewing them, which pass through their intestines unharmed, so their gastric juices allow faster germination,” Fuentes says.

However, the species has a very slow reproduction cycle. The females have their first offspring at between 7 and 9 years old, then give birth to one every three years. The mother feeds her child until it’s 3 years old, but it stays by her side until around the age of 6.

“They are really caring parents. They spend three years looking after the first baby before having the second,” Cortés says. “That is a long time, and with the threats of deforestation and hunting, it means that the populations can diminish very quickly.”

The monkey’s habitat, the Chocó forest region of Ecuador, is recognized as one of the world’s 25 biodiversity hotspots, according to the Washu Project. Covering 26 million hectares (64 million acres), an area the size of Great Britain, the Chocó extends from Panama, south along the western flanks of the mountains of Colombia and Ecuador, and down to the northern corner of Peru. In Ecuador, however, only 2% of the original forest remains. Agricultural expansion and logging, both legal and illegal, are the main causes of its destruction.

Creating a private reserve for the monkeys wasn’t an option, Cortés says, as it would have required huge amounts of money to buy and protect the land. There’s also the risk that landholders who may initially agree to sell their land for a reserve might squander the money and return to the land, he says. “So private reserves obviously have the drawback of reinvasions,” Cortés adds.

The expanses of forest in Esmeraldas province are well connected with the rest of the country, more than elsewhere in the Chocó region; this is why the Washu Project created the Jevon Forest Biological Station here, to continue their scientific activities and environmental education on the forest and its primates.

A network of camera traps has allowed the biologists to confirm the presence of more mammal species, 15, than they’d previously recorded, 12, at the project site. In addition to the spider monkeys, they’ve observed pumas (Puma concolor), white-lipped peccaries (Tayassu pecari), and red brocket deer (Mazama gualea). Other more elusive species include the jaguarundi (Herpailurus yagouaroundi) and the bush dog (Speothos venaticus).

Communities at stake

Javier Cedeño says the spider monkeys are thriving in the Tesoro Escondido forests. Unlike other areas in the Chocó, there are more monkeys here as they don’t face the constant threats of hunting and deforestation. Cedeño leads Asoprotesco, an association for sustainable cacao production and conservation in the Tesoro Escondido forests, which was created in 2014 with the help of the Washu Project.

Six families occupy seven farms in Tesoro Escondido, each farm spanning 6-30 hectares (15-74 acres). On each plot, 2-4 hectares (5-10 acres) are dedicated to organic cacao farming. The farmers have been given environmental and financial training, all in relation to cacao production; the training includes the active participation of the community taking into account environmental and socioeconomic needs, with the aim of establishing the best strategies and guiding the farmers to use them, without imposing anything on them.

“We don’t cut down forests anymore, but we conserve them,” says one of the farmers. “The farms are surrounded by forest and we want everything to be connected so that the animals can cross through. This is an aromatic cacao with a forest flavor.”

The process of cacao production, which sees the beans grown in Ecuador end up in countries like the U.K., Switzerland, France, Germany and the US, consists of looking after the cacao pod so that it doesn’t get harmed; extracting and selecting the best seeds from the pod; and rinsing, fermenting and drying them under canopies — not in ovens, as is done industrially.

“Since they were already cacao growers and farmers, it hasn’t been a drastic change,” Fuentes says. “They are investigators, they like trying different techniques. They were way ahead with the fermentation process, they were trying out what they would do. So all we had to do was sum up the whole process. They stopped using chemicals, but now we are trying to nurture the soil more, so we’re starting to add things which help them produce more.”

Direct sales have cut out the middlemen and helped farmers not only cover their basic family needs, but also invest in improvements for their homes and farms.

Asoprotesco’s work has inspired another community. In 2019, the association and the Washu Project visited the Canandé River Basin to encourage the creation of a similar organization headed by 12 farming families, who today sell their cacao as the Asoconcanandé association. This group was founded by the communities of Cristóbal Colón and Simón Plata Torres communities, who signed socioenvironmental agreements and became part of the Washu Project’s sustainable matrix model, with the same aim of producing cacao while protecting the forest and the spider monkeys.

“People lived off the logging industry,” says Marjorie Angulo, president of Asoconcanandé. “Within the organization, some were loggers or wood sellers who then quit. Now we are only working in agriculture and not destroying the forest. The issue was that some people were logging without knowing what they were doing wrong.”

The communities didn’t know how important it was to protect nature and preserve the forests, Angulo says. “We have learned that we need to look after them for future generations, because if we get rid of everything now, our children won’t have pure air to breathe or land to work on, because all the trees will be gone and there won’t be any animals. There won’t be anything, practically. The future is what inspires us,” she says.

To date, the communities behind both Asoprotesco and Asoconcanandé have made a collective effort to protect 558 hectares (1,379 acres) of forest, while maintaining 361 hectares (892 acres) of agricultural land, working with best practices to improve conditions for wildlife movement between forest patches.

Just like the spider monkeys, the farmers know that the forest is their home, and they can’t imagine living anywhere else.

“It is important to protect the forest because it’s our home,” says Cedeño, the Asoprotesco farmer. “We wouldn’t be able to leave this land. Many people think that the city is everything, but the land has life and we have to protect it.”

The researchers at the Washu Project have also learned through this process, changing their mindset on conservation and scientific methods. For them, involving communities is vital to ensuring the projects continue well into the future.

“Without [engaging with] people, the project won’t be sustainable through time,” Fuentes says. “Reserves which are only reserves become islands. The community doesn’t approve of them, and often the research stays in the papers but never goes beyond, without a real effect on conservation. So we have linked the people and the forest, which has become integral to our project.”

Banner image: Mother and young brown-headed spider monkeys, the flagship animal of the Washu Project. Image courtesy of the Washu Project.

This story was reported by Mongabay’s Latam team and first published here on our Latam site on Aug. 21, 2023.