A brown-headed spider monkey

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September 1, 2017
Jennifer Marino Walters

A Sweet Solution

Experts hope to save Ecuador's spider monkeys by helping farmers improve the way they produce chocolate.

Deep in the tropical rainforests of Ecuador, brown-headed spider monkeys swing through the trees. Along the way, they gobble up the ripe fruit that hangs from the branches.

Moritz Wolf

Cacao pods growing on a cacao tree. Chocolate is made from cacao beans, the seeds found in cacao pods.

While they may seem to have an easy life, these monkeys are actually in big trouble. Much of their rainforest home has been chopped down. One reason for this is to make room for cacao trees, the source of one of the world’s top treats—chocolate.

Without a place to live, these monkeys are in danger of dying out. Brown-headed spider monkeys are now one of the world’s most endangered animals. Fewer than 250 of them are left.

Conservationists are teaming up with farmers to save these monkeys. They’re on a mission to grow chocolate without harming the rainforest.    

Most brown-headed spider monkeys live in the El Chocó region of Ecuador in South America. Chocolate is a big business for farmers there. Like many other tropical regions near the equator, El Chocó is a perfect spot to grow cacao trees. It gets plenty of sunlight and rain. The small trees thrive in this warm, humid climate. Farmers plant fields of cacao, or cocoa, trees and harvest the tree’s beans. Then they sell large numbers of them to chocolate companies for a low price.

ISTOCKPHOTO/Getty Images

Scarlet macaws are native to the tropical areas of South America.

Conservationist Mika Peck has come up with a way to help these farmers make a living from cacao without clearing more of the monkeys’ rainforest home. He started the Chocó Project. Its aim is to teach farmers how to develop better-quality beans from the trees they already have. It even connects farmers with companies that will pay a higher price for their environmentally friendly product.

Peck and his team also help monkeys directly. They created the Tesoro Escondido Spider Monkey Reserve. More than half of all spider monkeys now live in this protected rainforest area.

“We are hopeful that we can preserve a healthy population of spider monkeys,” says Peck.

1. Why do you think the regions near the equator are known as the tropics?

2. Where are the world's tropical rainforests located? Why do you think they grow there?

3. The equator and both tropic lines pass through which continent?

4. How do you think the areas of the world not located near the tropics might be different from tropical regions?

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