Shy proboscis monkey extremely endangered

Shy proboscis monkey extremely endangered

By Hasan Zainuddin

BANJARMASIN, South Kalimantan (Antara): The large fair-haired, red-skinned bekantan (proboscis monkey) covered its long nose with its hands when it realized a person was watching it. Then slowly it inched away and disappeared into the thick jungle in its natural habitat.

"The monkey is extremely shy. If you want to have a look at it, you should take your time, waiting for them from a secret vantage point," said Achmad Arifin, a bekantan watcher.

Proboscis monkeys live in groups, each being led by a male monkey which stands out with its large size. Males have pot bellies and long noses and can be as big as a human adult.

The female monkey is slimmer and her nose is quite flat. A baby bekantan is usually red and most of the time clings to its mother's belly.

The monkey's colony is easy to locate as they make noisy "huuh...huh" sounds when the males are fighting or just pulling each others' legs.

Nasty monkeys upset farmers living near the forest, who often find their bananas in the garden stolen and the stems broken, unable to bear the animal's weight. That is why the monkeys are considered pests and are shooed back to the forest.

Some people, unaware the animals are highly endangered, have often scared the monkeys by attacking them. Others will catch the monkey's and their babies and then sell them.

"The monkeys will usually run for their lives when they see people. The smaller monkeys will leap from branch to branch and the large ones will come down to the ground and sprint as fast as they can," Achmad said.

Experts say that the bekantan is easily stressed and highly sensitive to changes in its environment. Very few proboscis monkeys, dubbed monyet bule or white ape, can be kept as domestic pets. It is extremely difficult to be breed the animals in captivity.

The monkeys eat mostly leaves. They eat less fruit because too much sugar forces their stomachs to ferment food and this leads to suffocation.

This was what happened to the 86 bekantan captured in Pulau Kaget in Barito Kuala. The animals were intended for a breeding program at Surabaya Zoo. Due to the lack of understanding about the animals' eating habits, 37 of them died.

Endangered

Logging has increasingly threatened the monkeys' survival in the Kalimantan jungle.

Forests in Pulau Kaget, a 267 hectare delta in the Barito river which has become the animals' main colony, is also severely threatened.

Since 1997, more and more rambai (soneratha cosiolaris) trees, which provide tasty leaves for the monkeys, have been lost due to agricultural activities. Environmental activists say that only 182 hectares of rambai is left.

This has raised the alarm for the survival of the species which has been protected by law since 1972. South Kalimantan Governor Gusti Hasan Aman sought cooperation with the Banjarmasin based Lambung Mangkurat University and the local forestry office for a joint study to save the animals.

Reforestation that the researchers initiated has ended in failure as the new trees did not grow as expected.

The efforts to relocate 117 of the estimated 127 bekantan on Pulau Kaget to Surabaya Zoo and other places had also ended in disaster. According to the official account, 37 died in the breeding ground and another 25 died on their way from Kalimantan to Surabaya.

The death of so many monkeys has provoked strong protests from environmentalists. Activists of the Malang based KSBK (Animal Conservation for Life) staged a demonstration at Surabaya Zoo. They demanded that the zoo management return the remaining monkeys to their natural habitat in Kalimantan.

But the protest fell on deaf ears and it is feared that all the bekantan sent to the zoo have died.

"A thorough study on the animals should have been conducted before they decided to move the animals to the zoo," Achmad said.

Arifin also questioned the motive behind the zoo management's intention to breed so many monkeys instead of a small number of couples. Besides, a place like Tanjung Puting in Central Kalimantan would be a better location than Surabaya for the project.

Environmentalists also demanded that the zoo authorities produce the remains of the monkeys they claimed have died because the remains of any protected animal that dies in captivity must be reported to the public. Some suspect that the animals had been sold abroad for research purposes.