 The reserve is home to rare buffy-headed marmosets and to one of the last wild populations of northern muriqui woolly spider monkeys.Feliciano Miguel Abdalla, the son of a Lebanese immigrant, obtained the Fazenda Montes Claros in Minas Gerais in 1944 on condition that he preserve the forest on the property.At this time the settlers in Minas Gerais were clearing the land for agriculture, and conservation was an alien concept.