Trail Cams Capture Amazon Animals Using ‘Canopy Bridges’

In the Peruvian Amazon, wildlife biologists have come up with a solution to help canopy species affected by infrastructure like roads and drainage systems built across the rainforest: Canopy bridges. Up in the forest canopy, monkeys and other arboreal species are used to being able to travel from tree to tree without descending to the forest floor. Roads that split the rainforest make this impossible, but hanging rope bridges make it possible once again. Trail cameras capture the species that are using these canopy bridges with great success.

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The World Wildlife Fund recently published an article on the bridges and their impact, saying: “[The canopy bridges are] a key mitigation measure to restore canopy connectivity for the Amazon’s tree-living fauna, such as porcupines, sloths, and monkeys, whose territories have become fragmented by linear infrastructure. A single road can isolate an animal from shelter, feeding resources and potential mates, hampering daily life and dividing species into distinct subpopulations, which can diminish genetic diversity.”

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And it’s not just the individual animals or their species that are affected; it’s the rainforest as a whole. Vania Tejeda, a former WWF-Peru wildlife officer, said: “Many of these arboreal species are seed dispersers, and the forest depends on them for regeneration.”

Watch trail-cam footage of some of the species that leverage these crucial canopy bridges in the Peruvian Amazon here:

Header stock image by RollingEarth/Getty Images

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