Devra G. Kleiman

Devra Gail Kleiman (November 15, 1942 – April 29, 2010) was an American biologist who helped create the field of conservation biology.

However, after taking a baby dingo home to her mother's house, where it wrecked the basement, and working on a project to tame wolves, she shifted her major to animal behavior, graduating in 1964.

Kleiman's greatest success was with the golden lion tamarin, a small, reddish-orange monkey that inhabits Brazil's coastal forest.

In the early 1970s she responded to an emergency alert from Brazilian biologist Adelmar Coimbra Filho, who reported that the tamarin population was down to several hundred in the wild and only 75 in captivity.

Kleiman worked with Filho to convince more than a dozen zoos to engage in a cooperative lending program to foster breeding.

Golden Lion Tamarin, photographed by Devra Kleiman in 1997.