Florida has few solutions for island monkeys with herpes
The monkeys — just six of them — arrived in the 1930s as tourist attractions, confined to an island in a Central Florida river.
The problem: They could swim.
The furry, pink-faced creatures native to Asia soon spread and multiplied in what is now Silver Springs State Park, capturing the hearts of visitors who traveled the lush river in glass-bottom boats — and confounding conservationists who want to rein them in.
They’re adorable but undeniably invasive. Experts worry their growing ranks will hurt other species. And to top it off, many of the monkeys carry a form of herpes virus.
The debate about whether and how to control the 4,000acre park’s rhesus macaques has reignited in recent weeks after a spate of far-flung monkey sightings brought alarm and blaring headlines: “They’re here!” one news station declared after the animals showed up as far as 100 miles north in Jacksonville. But park officials are no longer trying to tamp the macaque population down.
It’s a testament, researchers say, to the messy problem of managing an invasive species that has become a tourist highlight complete with its own urban legend (the monkeys did not escape from the set of a Tarzan movie).
“People feel really emotionally connected to these animals,” said Jane Anderson, an assistant professor of research at the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute who has studied the monkeys’ growth over the years. “And that makes it much harder to convey that we need to implement population management than [for] an animal that’s less cute and cuddly.”
Rhesus macaques have been known to wreak havoc on new habitats. In Puerto Rico, studies note, their introduction in the 1960s destroyed seabird populations as the monkeys devoured eggs. In the early 2000s, the island territory’s Department of Agriculture found that commercial farms were losing millions of dollars because of macaques and another monkey species.
Anderson estimates 550 to 600 macaques now living in North Central Florida and frets that more growth could bring serious consequences for area birds such as quails.
The macaque population along Florida’s Silver River had ballooned to nearly 400 by 1984, according to a paper by Anderson and her colleagues. About a thousand of the area’s monkeys were trapped and sold for biomedical research over the next several decades, they write, as people grew concerned they might be plundering birds’ nests and could pass their virus on to humans. The macaques’ herpes B has only been transmitted to people in the lab — but in the rare cases that humans get the virus, it can be deadly.
The trapping and selling drew a backlash from animal rights groups and others concerned for the monkeys’ welfare.
“It is a tragedy that wild monkeys are torn from their families and forest homes and sold to research and testing laboratories,” one animal rights organization’s spokesman said in 2013, calling on officials to catch and sterilize instead, as the Ocala Star-Banner reported.
But sterilization is expensive, researchers say, and budgets are tight. Steven Johnson, an academic who advocates cutting the monkey population, acknowledges there is no easy solution now that the macaques have made themselves at home.