Rare RI primates find a home in rural England

Bruce Emond, Contributor, Kent, England

Jakarta and Bandung are English-born and bred, but their names tell of their ancestral homeland a world away from the Kent countryside.

They are grizzled leaf monkeys, highly endangered in their native habitat on Java, but have these two have found a new home in the unlikely setting of Bekesbourne, one of the charming villages clustered around the historic city of Canterbury.

While other parts of Kent county are known for culinary delicacies like jellied eels and oysters, their fruit orchards and oasthouses -- the distinctive thatched buildings once used to dry hops for beer -- Bekesbourne's claim to fame is Howletts Wild Animal Park.

Since it was founded as a private zoo 45 years ago, Howletts has become a breeding center for rare and endangered animals. Its collection of animals includes traditional zoo draws such as tigers, rhinos and gorillas, with Howletts and its sister zoo of Port Lympne sending a group of the latter to Jakarta's Ragunan Zoo last year.

Other animals are those of the smaller, lesser known species, which are hurtling toward oblivion with little fanfare about their plight.

While there is no doubt about the threats to the survival of the grizzled leaf monkey (Presbytis comata), the chronic shortage of human and financial resources in Indonesia may put it at a lower conservation priority as compared to, say, the orangutan or Sumatran rhino.

Howletts has tried to fill the conservation vacuum with a focus on Indonesian primates in recent years.

As well as the grizzled leaf monkey, it is home to the Javan gibbon (Hylobates moloch), also known as the silvery or Moloch gibbon, the world's most endangered gibbon species with a maximum 2,000 surviving in its wild habitat of West Java; the Javan langur (Trachypithecus auratus auratus); siamang (Hylobates syndactylus) of Sumatra; and banded leaf monkeys (Presybitis melalophos), a little-studied species from the threatened forests of south and central Sumatra.

The park's Indonesian connection began in the early 1980s when its founder, John Aspinall, funded the transfer of three Sumatran rhinos -- one male and two females -- from Indonesian zoos to Howletts as part of a global captive breeding program. Although the program ultimately foundered due to a variety of problems, Howletts had established the necessary Indonesian government contacts for future projects, and the joint efforts have reaped success in breeding primates.

Howletts is now home to almost 20 Javan gibbons, by far the largest zoo population in the world, and it has been even more successful with the Javan langur, with almost 40 animals, some of them third-generation zoo births.

Jakarta and Bandung are the result of its cooperation with the Bandung Zoo, the only other facility housing grizzled leaf monkeys.

Others may lambaste the Indonesian government for its failure to take wholehearted measures to protect species in the wild, but Howletts/Port Lympne director of collections Peter Litchfield characterized his cooperation with the Ministry of Forestry as beneficial.

"We've always viewed our relationship in a positive way, since it was instigated by John Aspinall in the first place, and we very much want to continue in that line of thought," he said, noting the park would be interested in a captive breeding program for the endangered primates of the Mentawai Islands off the Sumatran coast.

"We've had successes here, and it's very important that we can maintain that cooperation with the Indonesian government."

Litchfield attributed much of the success to the unconventional approach of millionaire Aspinall, a famed man- about-town who founded Howletts in 1957 as a private zoo.

Aspinall, who died at the age of 74 in 2000, advocated large, spacious enclosures instead of cramped cages, and doing away with the taboo of close interaction between keepers and their animals.

Head keeper of primates Ernie Thetford said breeding primates proved a "long, complicated journey" during his 15 years at Howletts. Primates generally reach sexual maturity at a later age than many mammals and usually give birth to only one offspring.

However, they found that keeping small family groups in large enclosures and their food provision as close as possible to conditions in the wild were conducive to healthier animals.

"The enclosures are obviously nothing like the forest, but the height aspect, which is often missing in zoos, does make a difference to primates," Thetford said.

"It makes a primate feel secure, because when a primate is frightened, it goes up ... It also allows plenty of movement and exercise, which I think is really important ... it does their heart good and builds up good musculature."

The enclosures, set back several meters from visitor pathways, also have centrally heated indoor quarters that provides not only an escape from the cold:

"They are always available to the animals, and the public can't see in there, so they've always got another area where they can get away from being stared at. Primates generally don't like being stared at ... And less stress for the animals means better social bonding among them...."

While many zoos have resorted to "primate pellets", which provides all the nutritional needs for the animals, Howletts focuses on natural diets of fruits, vegetables and herbs, as well as Kenyan green beans for the leaf-eating monkeys. "We have a very wide range, including tropical fruits like rambutan, salak (snakefruit) and durian, which the siamangs really like," Thetford said. "We've got a good diet that's very varied every day, and while most zoos will say that, we really do that, which is a joy to be able to do that for the animals."

Thetford said the general philosophy was based on putting the animals first.

"It's not about compromising them for the public's viewpoint or anyone else's ... we let them just relax and be happy and get on with it."

They have got on with it so well that success brings its own set of problems, sadly evident in the story of the babirusa, another Indonesian resident of Howletts. The two males at the zoo, like almost all their cousins at European and U.S. zoos, are descended from two small groups and are now terribly inbred.

The problem of a limited genetic pool is especially acute for the Javan gibbon. With no recourse to source new bloodlines from the tiny wild population, the best option is to confiscate gibbons kept as pets in Indonesia.

"There are some estimates that there may be up to a couple of hundred animals as pets," Thetford said. "It's not the best situation to bring in a pet, but a lot depends on how it was treated and its interaction with other gibbons, and it's important for primates to have had infant-rearing experience.

"But, with the right philosophy and infant techniques, you can usually let them get over it."

While the ultimate goal of captive breeding is to return the animals to the wild, Litchfield recognized the irony in having successful captive breeding populations but no guarantee of the preservation of their habitat.

"The whole ethos of John Aspinall was that once we had enough of the animals, we would send them back, because have no major interest in supplying another zoo," he said. "Indonesian species are being bred in the hope that there will be an area of natural wild for them to be returned to.

"We are breeding these animals for Indonesia, and any help they can be along the way is greatly appreciated."