Primate Conservation and Human Livelihoods

Abstract

Primate conservation involves careful consideration of nonhuman primate species populations and threats to them; however, human livelihoods cannot be ignored and should be carefully understood in order to make a conservation initiative successful. Cohabitation of human and nonhuman primates is imperative to ensure a future for nonhuman primate species as the human population continues to grow; yet, conserving primates can have devastating consequences on human populations. Conservation biologists and primatologists will likely need to take into account detriment to the livelihoods of human populations surrounding nonhuman primate habitats. It is particularly important to be sensitive in situations where human communities are translocated from their homes, lose crops, or lose the use of land that had in the past been culturally and economically important to them in order to gain support for conservation programs and tolerance for nonhuman primates.