Saving the Spider Monkey
Directed by : Jérôme SEGUR – Costa Rica
For the past ten years, Adelina Chutt and her assistant, Aldemar Bejarano have been running the Curu refuge, and its program of reinserting the spider monkey into Costa Rica. As an endangered species cited in annex one of the Washington Convention, the majority of spider monkeys in Costa Rica are found in zoos, or as pets in private homes.
Costa Rica is a country committed to preserving the environment. It has 75 protected sites, about a quarter of its territory. This is enormous for a small Central American country with only 3 million inhabitants.
The Curu reserve is on Costa Rica’s Pacific coast, at the tip of the Nicoya pensinsula. The land at Curu has belonged to the Schutt family for several generations. By creating a refuge for wild animals, Adelina has been fulfilling the dream her father didn’t have the time to realize.