(MY) killing of primates

[Guest guest]

Tuesday August 18, 2009-The Star

Widespread killing of primates in Sarawak By STEPHEN THEN

 

MIRI: Native folks and some city dwellers are slaughtering primates – in

some cases mother and baby – to have them as exotic meat which is said to

‘‘very tasty”.

 

These practices are widespread and despite repeated complaints and reports

to the State Wildlife Department and State Forestry Department, it seems to

be getting worse.

 

In northern Sarawak, the killing of primates has become a “normal” practice

in rural longhouses.

 

A senior reporter for *Sin Chew Daily*’s Miri office, Vincent Lo Kiun Shin,

recently witnessed the horror of a mother gibbon and her baby being

slaughtered for food by longhouse folks in Ulu Baram.

*Slaughtered:* The severed hand of a gibbon found in a longhouse in Ulu

Baram in northern Sarawak.

 

Expressing disgust with what he saw, he said: “These longhouse folks are

supposed to value the forests they live in and protect its resources but

they seem to be killing these wildlife blatantly without any mercy.

 

He said the animals were shot with guns and blowpipes and slaughtered.

 

“These animals are already in danger of extinction. Loggers are killing them

and chasing them out of the forest.

 

“Now, they are being hunted and killed by the natives. Unless this sort of

killing is stop- ped, soon there will be no more primates left in the

forests,” he said yesterday.

 

Even here, monkeys and macaques are also being openly sold in the native

markets and backlanes.

 

When *The Star *reported a case of a native trader selling a monkey in a

small cage near the city bus station to a Miri Wildlife Department

investigating officer, his response was: “I am off today. I will tell my

boss about it.”

 

The next day, when asked what had happened to the case and why no

enforcement officers showed up at the scene, this investigating officer

replied: “I don’t know”.