Ángela Maldonado: Saving monkeys from an illegal Amazon wildlife trade

Ángela Maldonado is a Colombian monkey conservationist and founder and director of the Entropika Foundation, an organisation that works to protect rainforest ecosystems in the Amazon. Maldonado’s work in the Colombia-Peru-Brazil tri-border region of the Amazon has taken her into dangerous territories operated by drug traffickers, FARC paramilitaries, illegal loggers and poachers.  She has been working to protect Nancy Ma’s night monkeys (Aotus nancymaae), which she claims are being captured and sold to feed an illicit trade in animal testing. In 2012, her campaigning and legal actions led to Colombian officials revoking an animal testing licence for the Manuel Elkin Patarroyo lab, an alleged destination for many of the traded monkeys. Her work has led to a reclassification of the night monkey by the IUCN as vulnerable, further protecting this species.

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