By P.k. Balachandran Courtesy Ceylon Today

Last week, Minister of Agriculture Mahinda Amaraweera announced that the Government is considering a Chinese proposal to import 100,000 ‘toque monkeys’ from Sri Lanka for 1,000 zoos in that country. The international media promptly commented that the deal stemmed from Sri Lanka’s dire need for foreign exchange. The Indian TV outlet WION even doubted that the monkeys were meant for exhibition in Chinese zoos and insinuated that they were meant for Chinese dinner tables as monkey meat is a delicacy in China.

Media reports also pointed out that the toque monkey is on the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as an endangered species.

However, the real reason for contemplating the export of the toque monkey is none of the above but their ‘overpopulation’ in Sri Lanka and the damage they have been doing to crops, houses and house gardens in rural and suburban areas.

They not only raid our gardens but enter houses and destroy roofs,” said a resident of one of the residential areas in the outskirts of Colombo.

According to Minister Amaraweera, Sri Lanka has a population of 3 million toque monkeys. Efforts to control their population have failed. Hence, the decision to consider the Chinese offer to buy 100,000 of them.

The Minister also pointed that Sri Lanka has no law for the export of animals and therefore the legal aspect of the proposed export of monkeys will have to be taken into account. He added that the entire gamut of issues related to the export of the said monkey species and its environmental impact will be considered by experts before a final decision is taken.

The financial aspect of the deal with China has not been disclosed, giving rise to speculation because deals with China are believed to be non-transparent.

Environmentalist Jagath Jayawardena refused to comment on the deal in the absence of full information. For example, I would like to know from which areas in Sri Lanka they propose to catch the monkeys,” he said.

Environmental impact

While monkeys may be predators, they could also be playing a useful function in preserving the ecological balance, environmentalists say.

Writing on a public interest website, environmentalist Dr. Murali Vallipuranathan highlighted the environmental damage that would be caused by a large-scale reduction of the toque monkey population. According to him, it is a gross exaggeration to say that the toque monkey population is 3 million. The population is likely to be no more than 200,000, he contends. Sending away 100,000 of them would mean reducing their population by half!

And that could be deleterious for the environment. Toque macaques are involved in seed dispersing. A rapid decline of these monkeys may affect the spread of the plants feeding these monkeys. A rapid decline of macaques can lead to an increase in lizards and small birds because these monkeys are known to feed on them. On the other hand, leopards, fishing cats, pythons and mugger crocodiles are known to prey on these monkeys. A rapid decline of monkeys can lead these predators to look for alternative prey including domestic animals,” Vallipuranathan warns.

The Jaffna environmentalist also mentioned the lack of animal protection laws in China and said the exported monkeys could be badly treated.

Booming international monkey trade

Be that as it may, the Chinese demand is not unusual. Monkeys are extensively traded internationally, both legally and illegally. The main reason for the import of toque macaques by Western countries is research on drugs and vaccines because of their genetic and other similarities with humans. Vallipuranathan says that between 2000 and 2020, the US alone imported 482,000 monkeys.

According to Science Direct, more than five million tonnes of bushmeat (meat of wild animals) were harvested each year from the African rainforest in 2011, impacting 500 species, mostly mammals.

Bushmeat hunting has become a major threat to biodiversity in West and Central Africa, the journal says. While bushmeat is an essential and perhaps the only source of protein for the poor in rural Africa, its booming export and smuggling to other well-off countries have become a major source of worry.   

In a piece in The Observer of the UK in 2002, Anthony Browne talked of ‘a horrific trade in apes and monkeys being sold as meat in Britain’. This was threatening chimpanzees and gorillas with extinction, he asserted.

Scientists warn that the bushmeat trade has become so large that much of the wildlife in the forests of Central and West Africa is threatened with extinction within decades. One species of monkey – Miss Waldron’s red colobus – was eaten to extinction last year (2001), and conservationists say that, at the present rate of consumption, gorillas, bonobos (pygmy chimps) and chimpanzees have only about 10 years left,” Browne said. Indeed, the number of chimpanzees in the wild had fallen from 2 million a century ago to 110,000 in 2002.

In 2001, more than 15.1 tonnes of illegal meat was impounded at Heathrow Airport. A whole smoked monkey was selling in the London market for about £ 350. Bushmeat was smuggled with officials turning a blind eye. Browne quotes Clive Lawrence of Ciel Logistics, which disposed of illegal hauls of meat at Heathrow saying: It is organised, it is big money.”

Poor deprived of protein

According to available literature on the subject, the large-scale export and smuggling of bushmeat is depriving the poor in Africa of a traditional source of protein. By some estimates, bushmeat contributes 80-90 per cent of the animal protein consumed in certain rural regions of West and Central Africa.

Beyond its nutritional contribution, bushmeat also provides an important source of income where few alternatives exist, since it is easily traded, has a high value-to-weight ratio and can be preserved (dried) at low cost.

However, the other side of the coin is that approximately 805 million of the world’s people (11.3 per cent of the total population) remain chronically undernourished. Nearly all of them (98 per cent) reside in low-income areas, with at least one in four people in Sub-Saharan Africa presently lacking sufficient protein and calories for energy, says an FAO publication in 2014.

Micronutrient deficiencies, coined as ‘hidden hunger’, affect about two billion people worldwide, the prevalence of which is similarly highest in developing countries.

At the other end of the spectrum, over one billion people are overweight and 475 million are obese, with most of these being in the developed world, according to the FAO in 2013. It is this population which benefits from bushmeat export and smuggling, including the sale of monkey meat.

Prevent deforestation 

Dr. Vallipuranathan says that the more sensible way of tackling the monkey problem is to prevent deforestation. Deforestation has led to the shrinking of the natural habitat of monkeys, leaving them no alternative to encroaching on human habitats and eating up their resources.

Sri Lanka has been undergoing extensive deforestation with successive political regimes destroying the forests under the name of development projects. In 2021 alone, it lost 13.3 kha of natural forest.”

He further says that a wrong impression has been created about an explosion in the monkey population. He calls on environmentalists and zoologists to enlighten the public and stop the impending environmental disaster.

By P.K. Balachandran