Professor Peter Rodman of the Department of Anthropology at the University of California (Davis) began leading expeditions to eastern Ecuador in the summer of 1989, with the goal of establishing a long term primate research station.  The main goal of these initial expeditions was to locate a site where three of the largest primates in South America -- spider monkeys, woolly monkeys, and howler monkeys -- lived sympatrically, in order to begin research on the comparative socioecology of these species.

 

Photos: Cloud forest with stream, view of Sumaco from cleared field, camp on Sumaco survey
 

From 1989 to 1992, Rodman made four trips to explore various locales in in eastern Ecuador, particularly to sites in the east Andean foothills around the volcano Sumaco that rises sharply from Ecuador's Amazonian lowlands.  A number of graduate students from various departments at the University of California (Davis) participated in these surveys, including Randy Baloian, Greg Grether, Analisa Weaver, Craig Kirkpatrick, Drew Rendall, and Tony Di Fiore, while Lucho and Ivan Viteri, Daniel Sanchez, and Ivan and Ximena Cornejo helped to coordinate the logistics of these trips.  During this time, Rodman also initiated official ties with the Ecuadorian government and arranged for Dr. Luis Albuja of the Escuela Politécnica Nacional in Quito to become the Ecuadorian counterpart of the primate research program.  However, by the middle of the summer of 1992, it became apparent that in order to find a research site with healthy primate populations that had not yet been impacted by hunting or by clearing of the forests for agricultural land, it would be necessary to look further into the lowlands, away from human populations.

Toward the end of the summer of 1992, Peter Rodman turned his attentions to the large Yasuní National Park, a roughly one-million hectare reserve of tropical rainforest located in the Amazonian lowlands.  At the time, the park was seldom visited by nonindigenous outsiders.  With Tony Di Fiore, Rodman conducted a brief survey of the primate community in the western portion of the park along the Río Tiputini.  Walking along seismic transects that had been cut in the preceding years as the initial stage of petroleum interest in the region, they were excited to find thriving populations of all three of the primates they were interested in.

In the summer of 1993, Di Fiore and Larry Dew returned to Yasuní and spent two months surveying primate populations up and down the Río Tiputini and the Río Tivacuno.  By this time, the petroleum company Maxus Ecuador, Inc. had begun working in the park, cutting what would become the 110-kilometer Pompeya Sur-Iro road.  Nonetheless, their surveys revealed flourishing primate populations in the region and indicated that the remainder of the large mammalian fauna of the region was also intact.  Collared peccaries and red brocket deer were frequently encountered, and regular evidence of the presence of such rare mammals as tapir, jaguar, and puma was observed.  Many other, smaller mammals were also occasionally seen, including coati, tyra, capybara, jaguarundi, agouti, and a variety of rodents and bats.

At the end of that summer, Di Fiore and Dew  constructed a small camp two hours upriver from where the new petroleum road bisected the Río Tivacuno.  This camp was almost immediately abandoned because the petroleum company, to whom the Ecuadorian government had delegated responsibility for security throughout the park, decided that the primate research camp was too isolated and that all research projects should be consolidated and housed along the road.  Finally, several families of indigenous Huaorani hunter-gatherers also moved into the park and began living along the newly constructed road.

During the summer of 1994, Tony Di Fiore and Chelsea Kostrub, another University of California (Davis) graduate student, conducted a systematic survey of the northern half of the completed Pompeya Sur-Iro road corridor, from kilometer 36 to 72.  They recorded the presence of eleven species of nonhuman primates in the park during this survey.

At the end of the summer, researchers selected the region adjacent to and west of kilometer 47 along the Pompeya Sur-Iro Road (75º28’E, 0º42’S) to develop as the Proyecto Primates field site.  This location was chosen because of the high density of ateline primates found there during the summer survey.  The site lay between the settlements of two Huaorani families who had moved to the road in 1993 and who not yet started to hunt at this location. The ease with which many of the primates in the field site became habituated to the presence of human observers suggested a long isolation from human impact prior to the development of the road.

An additional attraction of the site was that it lay in nonfloodable terra firme forest away from the influence of major rivers.  Many other neotropical primate research sites are located adjacent to rivers that are subject to seasonal or episodic flooding, thus the chosen locale was promising for comparative purposes.  Moreover, the area was situated at the edge of a huge, unfragmented expanse of forest.  Alternative sites to the east of the road corridor were, in most cases, large islands cut off from more contiguous forest by roads and rivers.

Beginning in the fall of 1994, Di Fiore began cutting and marking trails in the field site and establishing five hectares of botanical transects for monitoring forest phenology.  Amy Jacobs, Kristin Phillips, Wilmer Pozo and, most importantly, Juan ("Capitan") Nenquimo greatly helped with establishing the trail system and with measuring and marking all of the trees in the botanical transects.  Mapping of the trail system was also begun during this time, although this work was completed over the next few years with help from Daniela Andrade, Larry Dew, April Harlin, Andi Jones, Chelsea Kostrub, Scott Suarez, Julia Wilner, Denis Yioulatos and especially Boyo Orengo.

Recognizing the importance of protecting wildlife from the growing human presence in the park, Proyecto Primates established an accord with the Huaorani community of kilometer 32 in late 1994 to forestall hunting in the field site.  Essentially, members of the community agreed not to hunt in the study area and instead act as stewards, guarding the site from other hunters, in exchange for some financial compensation for the community each month.

Several long-term primate research projects were initiated soon after the field site was established.  Tony Di Fiore began his doctoral research on the foraging ecology, behavior, and social organization of woolly monkeys.  Wilmer Pozo collected data for his dissertation on the ecology and behavior of spider monkeys.  They were soon joined by Larry Dew, studying seed dispersal by both of these species, and by Denis Yioulatos and John Cant, studying the comparative locomotor and positional behavior of ateline primates.  Chelsea Kostrub began her dissertation research on tamarin social behavior and ecology in the summer of 1995, a study she later continued at the Tiputini Biodiversity Station.

By the summer of 1996, all of these initial projects being conducted in the Proyecto Primates field site had been completed. Freddie Trujillo, another Ecuadorian student from the Universidad Central, stewarded the field site for a short period until late 1996, but the site was essentially without researchers from then until Scott Suarez began his dissertation work on the cognitive foraging ecology of spider monkeys in June 1998.  He was soon joined by Di Fiore and Kristin Phillips who began a project on the genetic social structure of the woolly monkey population.

Since then, research by a number of primatologists has been carried out on woolly, spider, titi and saki monkeys. In 2001, Stephanie Spehar started a project on spider monkey vocal behavior, two Ecuadorian students -- Juan Jose Bravo and Melissa Moreano -- researched habitat use and diet of Callicebus and Pithecia, and Jamille Heer, with the help of Renee Bauer, volunteered for the research year studying female behavior of woolly monkeys and collecting phenology data for the project. In the summer of 2002, Andres Link continued research on Lagothrix, volunteering for a full year; Dylan Schwindt took over in 2003/2004 as project researcher following saki and titi monkeys for the comparative monogamy project. Ecuadorian licenciado student Gabriel Carillo Bilbao also followed titi monkeys for his research project. All of these projects are reviewed in more detail in Primate Research.

(left to right: Jamille, Renee, Tony, Melissa, Andres, Juan Jose, Ucata, Dylan)

RECENT EVENTS

During the hiatus when researchers were absent from the study site, habituated woolly and spider monkeys were hunted, in spite of the continuing accord with the local Huaorani community.  For example, Tony Di Fiore noted changes in group composition and range patterns of the three groups of woolly monkeys that were the subjects of his dissertation research between 1996 and 1998.  Two of these groups -- those that ranged closest to the petroleum road -- were either greatly reduced in size or disappeared entirely.  The third group, which ranged further inland, seemed to increase in size, perhaps due in part to immigration of individuals from hunted groups.  Additional social groups that were noted in Di Fiore's initial study but that ranged even further from the road appeared similar in total number to the previous estimates.  Scott Suarez noted a reduction in the density of spider monkeys ranging close to the road between the end of Larry Dew's study and the onset of his own -- a reduction that is presumably attributable to hunting by humans.

To prevent further hunting, future research schedules were coordinated so that the site is rarely without personnel. Furthermore, in 1999 Proyecto Primates researchers established road and trail-head signs to distinguish the study area to all individuals within Yasuní National Park.  The hope is that petroleum workers and other Huaorani families would assist both Proyecto Primates and the Huaorani community living along the Río Tiputini (those families that have had a "no hunting" agreement with Proyecto Primates since 1995) with conservation of the study site.  

The Huaorani community leaders living at the Río Tiputini helped with road sign placement.  Noted in the photograph are, from left: Di Fiore, Tiwe, Mingue, Ucata, Nambai, and Nambai's son (missing: Umberto and Iteca).  Special thanks are due to Carlos Flores, administrator of the Estación Científica Yasuní, and Dr. Robyn Burnham -- both participated in the ceremony. 

Oil worker kidnapping

Another major event that affected the project was the kidnapping of 8 Repsol petroleum workers inside Yasuní National Park -- ostensibly by Colombian guerillas -- in October 2000. Several men were taken from the Northen Production Facility, a camp 5 km from Estación Científica Yasuní. Link to news report. Because of this, the park was closed to research for several months. A total of 57 individuals were arrested in Colombia in June 2001 for this and other crimes (Link to news report).  Five alleged kidnappers have been indicted by the U.S. in connection with the Yasuní incident and the killing of one U.S. citizen. A recent News Hour (PBS) report on Ecuador's economic situation in relation to oil and drug exploitation is enlightening.

The generous financial support of many agencies and organizations has been crucial to both developing the Proyecto Primates field site and maintaining research there.  Funding for Peter Rodman's preliminary surveys in Ecuador was provided by the University of California (Davis).  Graduate student participation in these early surveys was made possible by summer fellowships from the University of California (Davis) and by NSF Graduate Fellowships awards to various students.

Later surveys in the Yasuní National Park were made possible through the support of the NSF Research Training Grant on "Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Animal Behavior" to the University of California (Davis) and by grants from the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation to Tony Di Fiore and the Dourocouli Foundation to Larry Dew.  NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grants to various University of California (Davis) graduate students helped fund development of the site as did a grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research to Tony Di Fiore.  Additional sources of funding for specific research projects are noted in Primate Research.

Throughout, invaluable logistical assistance was given by the P.U.C.E. and by Maxus Ecuador, Inc. and the staff of the Maxus Northern Production Facility.