Conservationists give cover for Mauritian monkey sales to labs

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2007:

 

 

Conservationists give cover for Mauritian monkey sales to labs

 

PORT LEWIS, KUALA LUMPUR, HANOI--Nearly 500 years after

Dutch sailors are believed to imported the first macaques to

Mauritius, claims of a need to control them as an alleged invasive

species have become a front line of defense for the booming Mauritian

macaque export industry-- which captures some macaques from the wild,

but breeds them in captivity to comply with U.S. and international

laws that prohibit or restrict the use of wild-caught animals in labs.

Six Mauritian companies export macaques. The largest may be

Noveprim, founded in 1980. " Monkeys are not indigenous to

Mauritius, " emphasized Noveprim chief executive Gerald de Senneville

in an October 2007 interview by Nasseem Ackbarally of the Inter Press

Service, based in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Ackbarally found quick agreement from Mauritian Wildlife

Foundation executive director Jacques Julienne and conservation

manager Vikash Tattayah.

" The monkeys are a nuisance from a conservation point of

view, " said Julienne. " They eat birds' eggs, kill small and adult

birds alike, and attack indigenous plants. "

Added Tattayah, " Endangered species like the pink pigeon,

the echo parakeet and even the Mauritian kestrel are regular monkey

victims. Their impact on our forests is disastrous. "

The Mauritian Nat-ional Parks & Conservation Fund collects an

export tax of $70 per monkey.

The conservation argument, if globally persuasive, could

buy Mauritius and other island nations that export non-native monkeys

a political edge in competition with nations that sell native monkey

species to labs.

The conservation argument joins the older argument for

macaque export as pest control, voiced to Ackbarally by Mauritius

Agricultural Marketing Cooperat-ive Federation chief Tunaz Rampall.

Macaques " eat around 20% of our production, thieves take 10% and 15%

are destroyed by insects and vermin, " Rampall said.

But both the conservation and pest control arguments are

undercut by the modus operandi of the monkey exporters.

" Breeding monkeys are captured between Septem-ber and

December, when food is rare in the wild, " wrote Ackbarally. " The

captured animals are checked for diseases such as tuberculosis. If

found fit for breeding, they are kept in quarantine. Eight to twelve

months later, they give birth. Two years later, the small monkeys

are quarantined, checked for diseases and then exported. "

The captures leave more food for the macaques who escape

capture, who then are able to birth and raise more young the next

year. Rather than lastingly reducing the population, the captures

amount to " sustainable yield " cropping.

Mauritius exports about 10,000 monkeys from the island to the

U.S., Britain, and Japan, generating foreign exchange revenue of

more than $20 million a year, Mauritian agro-industry minister Arvin

Boolell told Ackbarally.

His report came as protest rose in Malaysia over the June

2007 declaration of national resources and environment minister Seri

Azmi Khalid that his office had relaxed a 23-year-old ban on

exporting long-tailed macaques, specifically to supply laboratories

and Chinese live markets. Khalid claimed that the macaques to be

exported would be captured from the urban population of about

258,000, rather than the wild population of about 484,000.

" These poor primates will be destined for the cooking pot and

be subjected to horrendous suffering in laboratories, " objected vice

chair M. Kula Segaran of the opposition Democratic Action Party, in

a statement to Agence France-Presse.

" Segaran said that Azmi should make clear who would profit

financially from the export of macaques, and say whether it had

considered sterilization or humane culling " to reduce the macaque

population, AFP reported.

The Malaysian Animal Rights & Welfare Society on October 19,

2007 asked the national Anti-Corruption Agency to investigate Khalid

and former Department of Wildlife & National Parks director general

Musa Nordin.

" In July, the Animal Rights & Welfare Society submitted a

memorandum to Khalid demanding the reinstatement of the ban and a

halt on all pending macaque shipments, " reported Bede Hong of the

online political news web site Malaysiakini. " They also lodged a

police report against Azmi and ministry officials for [allegedly]

violating the 1972 Protection of Wildlife Act. The police forwarded

the case to the ACA last month, saying it has elements of abuse of

power. "

Musa Nordin admitted to the Malaysia Star in September 2007

that he is " indirectly involved " in the monkey traffic.

" We have information that the decision to export the monkeys

was made when Musa Nordin was still the director general [of Wildlife

& National Parks], " alleged Animal Rights & Welfare Society chair N.

Surendran. " We have information that there is a connection with the

company. He has close contacts with the Department of Wildlife.

Clearly there was some hanky panky going on there with elements of

corruption, " Surendran told Malaysiakini.

Circumstantial evidence suggests that many of the wild-caught

macaques who are supposedly sold to China to be eaten are instead

becoming breeders or being sold to labs as allegedly captive bred.

Of note are that relatively few monkeys are seen in live

markets, as the Chinese government has moved since the Sudden Acute

Respiratory Syndrome outbreaks of 2002-2003 to suppress commerce in

wild-caught mammals, while some laboratory monkey exporting

companies have grown much more rapidly than the birth rates of their

monkey troupes appear to account for.

An instance of suspect trafficking was intercepted in

northern Vietnam on September 17, 2007. Police in Quang Ninh

province confiscated 91 longtailed macaques from a truck heading

toward the Chinese border, police spokesperson Cao Manh Hai told

Associated Press.

" Sixteen of the animals were dead and the rest were very weak

when the police found them, " Associated Press reported.

Cao Manh Hai said the surviving macaques were being looked

after at a local conservation center.

 

 

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

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Fax: 360-579-2575

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