Tiny monkeys from South America are in grave danger, such as the pied tamarin from the region around Manaus and the four lion tamarin species from the eastern forests. These monkeys benefit from American Friends of Durrell’s support for Training for Tamarin Conservation.

Tamarins are small rainforest-dwelling monkeys, which are facing extinction because of loss of habitat. Many end up in zoos and rescue centers. Training for Tamarin Conservation brings together the animal keepers and conservationists from Jersey Zoo with their counterparts in Brazil in courses and practical sessions teaching tamarin conservation, including how to improve captive conditions for the little monkeys and how to release them back to the wild. A significant portion of course/practical content covers working with local communities to set up and manage protected areas, including creating corridors of trees linking one patch of forest to another.

Madagascar is Durrell’s largest Field Program, benefitting the world’s rarest tortoise, the ploughshare tortoise, and many more critically endangered species and habitats, such as the world’s rarest duck, the Madagascar pochard, the gentle lemur of Lake Aloatra and the Madagascar big-headed turtle. 

With an annual budget of more than 2 million dollars, a staff of 70 and operations in 7 remote sites, this program is partially supported by three American Friends of Durrell projects: Madagascar Program Management and Coordination, Madagascar Program Strategic Development and Durrell Conservation Training Madagascar. 

Juliette Velosoa, a Durrell staff member, has conducted research and conservation for many years on the big-headed turtle, deservedly winning the Disney Conservation Hero Award in 2014.

American Friends of Durrell also supports Re-introduction/Conservation of the Ploughshare Tortoise, Durrell’s long-running effort to save this beautiful animal.  Suffering from a history of hunting and habitat loss, it is now critically endangered by the illegal international trade in wildlife.  Ernest Bekarany, who is head of the breeding center for the ploughshare, won the Disney Conservation Hero Award in 2017. 

In 2023 we received the first installment of a three-year grant from the US Fish and Wildlife Service to increase efforts for Safeguarding Three Species of Chelonian (tortoises and turtles), not only for the ploughshare tortoise, but also for the flat-tailed tortoise and the big-headed turtle, also seriously threatened.

We also support the Alison Jolly Madagascar Scholarship, an award to a Malagasy conservationist to attend courses offered by Durrell Conservation Academy. The Scholarship was created to honor Dr Alison Jolly, an eminent American primatologist who was among the first scientists to study wild lemurs, devoting her life to them and to the people of Madagascar for fifty years. She wrote about her lifelong love affair with Madagascar in Thank You, Madagascar - Conservation Diaries of Alison Jolly.  Alison was a great friend of Gerald and Lee Durrell.

• Saving Amphibians from Extinction in the Caribbean (2016, 2017)

• St Lucia Racer Breeding Facilities in St Lucia (2018)

• Saving the St Lucia Racer (2019, 2020, 2022)

• SMSG Cuban Solenodon Project (2021, 2022)

The Caribbean Islands have the largest proportion of threatened amphibians in the world. American Friends of Durrell is supporting Durrell's multi-year rescue effort called Saving Amphibians from Extinction in the Caribbean. One of the threats is the global epidemic of the deadly frog-attacking chytrid fungus. Durrell is working in Montserrat and Dominica to study the spread of chytrid and to try to control its effects by environmental manipulation. Other threats come from habitat loss, which is especially serious on the enormous island of Hispaniola. Durrell is leading surveys on the distribution and population sizes of amphibians in Haiti and the Dominican Republic to guide decisions on conservation action, as well as training local people in these skills. Durrell is initiating breeding trials for a number of species, as captive breeding will be a necessary tool for preventing the extinction of many of them.

American Friends of Durrell also supports St Lucia Racer Breeding Facilities in St Lucia, the first step in the recovery program for the rarest snake in the world, the St Lucia racer.  No longer found on St Lucia, breeding stock has come from the few racers discovered on a tiny offshore island.

American Friends of Durrell also supports the work of the Small Mammal Specialist Group (of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature) to learn more about one of the most unusual and most elusive mammals in the world, the Cuban Solenodon, which is classified as Endangered. It is so rare, we do not have a good photograph of it......yet!

The pygmy hog is the smallest member of the pig family and lives in the grasslands of Assam in northern India.  In the early 1970s it was clearly on the brink of extinction due to extensive loss of habitat, particularly by indiscriminate burning.  Gerald Durrell took an interest in the little hogs and eventually a breeding program was set up in Assam, along with many field studies to determine the ecological requirements of the species.  Over a number of years captive-bred hogs were released into three protected areas, where they have survived and bred, carefully monitored by Durrell’s field team using radio-tracking and camera traps.  Re-introducing Pygmy Hogs into Assam has been supported by American Friends of Durrell. 

 Veterinarian Parag Deka, who leads the field team, won the Disney Conservation Hero Award in 2017. 

Not only has the pygmy hog been saved, but its presence is a good indicator of the health of its grassland habitat, which is also home to tigers, rhinos and a critically endangered bird, the Bengal florican. Recently Durrell began a programme to restore degraded habitats in one of the pygmy hog strongholds, Manas National Park.  American Friends of Durrell supported Rewilding Manas in 2021.

The establishment of Jersey Zoo was Gerald Durrell’s first practical step towards his mission to save species from extinction.  Today, more than 60 years later, it is hailed as one of the best zoos in the world, one that practices what it preaches – conservation.