Finally this challenging 2020 is ending and with it a year that challenge our lifestyle as well as many of our believes. This year changed the way we travel, work and relate with others. In this post we are going to revisit some of the goals we have proposed for this year and reflect on how we’ll or not so we’ll we achieved them.
We proposed to continue the long-term wildlife monitoring in the study area as one of the main goals for the zocay project in 2020. Despite the national lockdown and travel restrictions we were able to verify the birth of infants for all primate species, except the Brumback night monkeys. But we were able to locate a new group of night monkeys in a new forest. We also observed infants of giant anteaters and coatis during the last months of the year.
Monitoring of fauna in Villavicencio city was also made during and after the national lockdown, especially of two groups of Colombian squirrel monkeys, one of which is provisioned by local people. This group has been observed by a student from a local university doing her undergraduate thesis.
One of the project we had planned for 2020 that was not possible to implement due to the national lockdown and travel restrictions is the effects of road killing on primates and other fauna in the urban and rural areas of the region. A revision the methods we were planning to use to achieve this goal is needed.
Another objective of our project for 2020 that was partially achieved was the establishment of the current conservation state of dusky titi monkey in their distribution area. Although we gather some important information from areas in the distribution of dusky titi monkey, there are some limits that need more data. We will try to obtain these data during 2021 combining citizen science and traditional scientific methods.
Some of the information we was hoping to gather during 2021 that was not possible to get due to COVID-19 were:

1. Information about the economic cost of crop-raiding by black-capped capuchins on perennial crops in the region
2. Expand our data collection to other native fauna in the region
3. Implement some citizen science data collection in the region to monitor threats for native fauna in the region
   2021 is looking as a challenging year ahead for us, not only because of the pandemic is still active but also because, despite the new vaccines, vaccination in a country like Colombia won’t be as fast and equal as the government and media makes it look. So for the new year let’s just hope we will be able to continue monitoring the monkeys and forest we have been monitoring before and hopefully we will be able to implement new methodologies that help us answer all the questions we have.
   Happy New Year to all! We wish you all a 2021 full of health, love, collaborations and monkeys!!!
   © Copyright Disclaimer. All pictures used on this web page are protected with copyrights to Xyomara Carretero-Pinzón. If you want to use any of these pictures, please leave a message on the website. Thank you.