REGULATING MONKEY TRADE GIVES PRIMATES MORE PROTECTION

By Hanka Kawecka-Lee

JAKARTA (JP): Selling monkeys to research institutes and pharmaceutical companies for laboratory testing is a lucrative but very controversial business.

Right now, the Government is in the process of amending legislation on this subject. New regulations prepared by the Ministry of Forestry are expected to come into effect shortly, which will allow the export only of captive-bred monkeys.

Combined with new import restrictions in the United States and elsewhere, these changes should make scenes such as that described below a thing of the past.

The monkeys were scrambling for the safety of the forest. Dropping down from the high canopy, the smaller pushed by the larger, and females by males, it was a frantic exodus from the enclosure to what, at first glance, appeared to be freedom. After being transported from the south Sumatran jungle to the western coast of Java, the animals were exhausted and petrified.

The narrow plank which connected the holding area with the top of the nearest trees became a battle ground since, just as the animals reached the outstretched branches, the enemy awaited them. A contingent of already-established monkeys, using their teeth and flailing limbs, attacked the newcomers, unloading their own frustration at being displaced.

The spectacle was watched intently by an animal dealer, to whom this live cargo represented a small fortune.

Although the general public like to believe that the monkeys used in medical trials are purpose-bred, this is generally not the case. Most monkeys exported from Indonesia have been caught in the wild, many from southern Sumatra.

Sleeping tree

David Wills of Humane Society International recently witnessed a trapping operation, and this is how he described it in the society's newsletter:

"Capture methods vary. Often a group of primate trappers locate a 'sleeping tree'.... As night falls, (the monkeys) gather together for safety and comfort, usually at preselected 'sleeping trees'.... Once trappers locate a tree, in the darkness, after the monkeys have bedded down, they surround the tree with large nets. As dawn comes, the monkeys awake...(and) walk into a virtual war zone.

"Monkeys are grabbed by their tails, and have their arms pinned behind them. If they try to protect themselves, the trappers simply take a stick or stone and bash in their teeth.... As many as fifteen animals are stuffed into a cage less than one foot by one foot by three feet.... Agents only take the animals they feel are suitable for research. The rest, who are too large, too aggressive, or too old are usually sold for food or simply killed...."

Although local dealers are the ones catching and selling the monkeys, the market is fueled by foreign institutional buyers, mainly from the United States and Japan. According to one prominent trader, it was a well known American university that, through continuous requests for laboratory animals, encouraged him to leave the mining business and become an animal dealer.

The arrival of AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) has provided an excellent excuse for all animal dealers: The need for laboratory testing is justified to any layman as a vital service to humanity. Only those closely involved in Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) research know that a very limited number of monkeys, which have to be laboratory-bred, are in fact used for AIDS testing. The others are used for the production of various vaccines, and for pharmaceutical trials.

The government's justifications for granting export permits for long-tailed and pig-tailed macaques have recently come under fire from local NGOs. It has come to light that some NGOs have vested interests in incriminating established dealers so they might break into the business themselves.

Others, genuine NGO's like the prominent Indonesian Environmental Forum (Walhi), act out of a sense of ethics and honest concern for the future of wildlife in the country.

"The lack of reliable information on the size of the wild monkey population, from which thousands are taken for sale each year, is worrying", says Suraya Afiff, Walhi's chief ecologist.

The last census in Sumatra was carried out before many of the government's transmigration schemes were introduced, which have boosted the local human population with poor farmers from Java. "Even worse", she declares, "is the lack of control and supervision in catching and transporting the monkeys."

Her words are echoed in Wills' report, which quotes one trader describing a competitors activities in these words: "If he ships 1,000 monkeys, you can guarantee that 5,000 were captured and processed." The rest, it is obvious, either died or ended up in a cooking pot.

Dead on arrival

In 1992, a shipment of 110 Indonesian macaques caught the attention of the American public: all were dead on arrival.

How many sick and injured animals are left to rot in the jungle, no-one knows.

As many southeast Asian countries, including neighboring Malaysia and the Philippines, have recently stopped the export of monkeys, animal dealers here have become increasingly popular overseas.

Stephen Nash, Southeast Asia Director of TRAFFIC and former director of the World Wide Fund for Nature in Indonesia, calls for more effective enforcement of official regulations and procedures, saying that "Indonesia has a potentially effective trade management system of using quotas, catch permits, transport permits and export permits.

"However, until this system is correctly implemented, I expect that additional Indonesian species will become threatened through an excessive 'legal' trade." This may very well apply as much to long-tailed and pig-tailed macaques as to other animals. It is only recently that some animal dealers have started captive breeding programs.

Suraya commented favorably on the importance of the government's new regulations, but added "How will the origin of the monkeys be determined for sure?" Some observers are still wondering if the trade needs to be stopped completely.