Atlantic Forest clearance for sugar, coffee and cattle reduced the species' habitat to a few per cent of its original extent, and live capture for the pet trade removed animals from what was left. Surveys in the early 1970s produced estimates in the low hundreds, and the species became one of the first test cases for coordinated zoo breeding tied to a wild recovery plan.
Zoos across several countries bred tamarins under a managed studbook, and reintroductions into Brazilian forest began in the 1980s. Reintroduced animals and their descendants now make up a substantial share of the wild population. Corridor planting between fragments and legal protection of private reserves carried the rest of the work.
The recovery is real but conditional. A yellow fever outbreak from 2016 killed a large fraction of some subpopulations, demonstrating that a species confined to fragments remains one epidemic away from reversal, and the IUCN listing remains Endangered.