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bait application no impacts on song sparrows were
detected.
Visits to the island will occur for the next
2
years to
confirm the eradication efficacy. There is limited potential
for reinvasion given the remote location and almost non-
existent human or vessel traffic. Long-term ecological
monitoring will continue on Rat Island and adjacent islands
to document ecosystem changes resulting from rat removal.
The expected eradication success will significantly im-
prove habitat for native species, particularly burrow-
nesting seabirds, which are known to breed on offshore
rat-free islets. This project is an important step towards
restoring habitat on Rat Island, and potentially on other
rat-infested islands of distinct ecological importance within
the Aleutian archipelago.
STACEYBUCKELEWIsland Conservation, Islands and Oceans
Center,
95
Sterling Highway, Suite
1,
Homer, Alaska, 99603,
USA. E-mail stacey. buckelew@islandconservation.org
GREGGHOWALD Island Conservation Canada, Vancouver,
Canada
STEPHENMAcLEAN The Nature Conservancy, Alaska, USA
GREGORYSIEKANlECand WILLMEEKSUS Fish and Wildlife Service,
Alaska Maritime NWR, USA
Outbreak of yellow fever affects howler monkeys
in southern Brazil
In
2001
an outbreak of sylvatic yellow fever affected the
populations of black-and-gold howler monkeys
Alouatta
caraya
in the west of the southern Brazilian State of Rio
Grande do Sul. Since then, the Division of Environmental
Vigilance of the State Centre of Health Vigilance has
monitored the human population, collected mosquitoes, and
captured black-and-gold howler monkeys and brown howler
monkeys
Alouatta guariba clamitans
throughout the State,
and especially from the affected region, for viral detection.
Immunohistochemical exams confirmed the presence of
the virus in several black-and-gold howler populations.
Despite the efforts of the governmental agencies to con-
trol the spread of the disease, a new and stronger outbreak
began in
2008.
This outbreak has also been observed to
have a high impact on Argentinian howler monkey pop-
ulations in forests near the border with Brazil. So far, sev-
eral hundred black-and-gold howlers have been reported
dead in
>
30 municipalities by local health and environ-
mental authorities in western and central Rio Grande do
Sul. In January
2009
mortality of eastern brown howler
monkeys also began to be reported. Because of these
outbreaks the State of Rio Grande do Sul was reclassified
from a disease-free area to an area of transition of sylvatic
yellow fever.
In addition to this disease-related mortality, recent
media news has higWighted that ranchers, afraid of be-
coming sick, are killing monkeys in several places in the
State. This is occurring despite frequent public statements
by authorities and scientists on the impossibility of mon-
key-human yellow fever transmission. These professionals
have also stressed in the media that, like humans, monkeys
are victims of the disease and that the Brazilian Ministry of
Health consider them important allies by acting as health
sentinels. Because of their high susceptibility to yellow fever
the death of howler monkeys gives the first warnings of the
circulation of the virus within a region, allowing health
authorities to take timely measures for promoting regional
campaigns of human vaccination.
Both
A. caraya
and
A. guariba clamitans
are categorized
as Vulnerable by the Environmental Secretariat of the
State of Rio Grande do Sul (Decree
#
41672, 10
June
2002)
because of habitat loss and alteration, hunting and the
illegal pet trade. These threats, together with sylvatic yellow
fever and the reported killings, could produce a synergistic
effect leading to local extinction, especially of isolated
populations. A consequence of such local extinctions for
the species at a regional level would be the rupture of
metapopulation dynamics, resulting from an increase in the
distance between subpopulations isolated by an inhospita-
ble matrix.
An inter-institutional campaign, involving local and state
governmental agencies, universities, NGOs, zoos and veter-
inary clinics, to improve public awareness, animal manage-
ment and disease control is currently been discussed under
the coordination of fue Environmental Secretariat of Porto
Alegre, the State capital. Projects to evaluate and monitor the
impact of these yellow fever outbreaks on the size, structure
and conservation status of howler monkey populations, and
to study the ecology of sylvatic yellow fever spread are
currently being developed at the Laboratory of Primatology
of the Pontifical Cafuolic University of Rio Grande do Sul.
JULIOCEsARBICCA-MARQUESLaboratorio de Primatologia, Pon-
tificia Universidade Catolica do Rio Grande do SuI, Av.
Ipiranga
6681
Pd. 12A, Porto Alegre,
RS
90619-900, Brazil.
E-mail jcbicca@pucrs.br
Elusive highland pygmy tarsier rediscovered in
Sulawesi, Indonesia
The world's smallest tarsier,
Tarsius pumilus,
commonly
called the pygmy tarsier, was recently rediscovered in the
higWand mossy forest of Lore Lindu National Park, Central
Sulawesi, Indonesia, after not being seen alive for more
than
70
years. Named by Miller and Hollister in
1921,
pygmy tarsiers have previously only been known from two
museum specimens independently collected in
1917
and
