FOR MORE ON WILD MONKEYS
bins are covered to prevent the animals from scavenging. To wean the monkeys from human handouts, the department has planted about 300,000 fruit trees throughout the parks to provide natural food sources.
Despite those efforts, hordes of monkeys have ran amok at the Shing Mun Reservoir’s barbecue pits. The animals rushed benches, snatching plastic bags then taking flight. Kids with long sticks gleefully chased the animals, beating them away, while others monkeys assaulted the garbage bins and battled over the contents that spilled to the ground. China Daily visited again in August. Nothing had changed. The Internet carries countless blogs detailing the harrowing experiences of exchange students confronted by aggressive monkeys, who steal grocery bags, and attack hikers who try to withhold food items. YouTube videos show macaques eating from potato chip bags, or otherwise showing aggression (often in defense of their babies).
“The feeding will help them to reproduce at their maximum rate, which is higher than the natural rate of the population.” Martelli says. “In their natural state, food is not always available, especially not high energy food. Some of the females will not breed. More babies will die, and of course, in a place like Hong Kong, they have very few natural predators.”
Martelli says the macaque is one of the world’s most successful and adaptable creatures. Certain groups
The natural range of the macaques is widespread, encompassing north Africa’s Barbary macaques to Japan’s snow monkeys. Wherever they reside, their food scavenging rouses tensions with nearby human settlements. Martelli says Hong Kong presents a unique situation for the species. Here macaques are embraced as a protected and valuable part of the ecosystem. The monkeys are able to flourish, with 40 percent of the SAR’s territory falling within country parks or otherwise protected nature areas.
Singapore might be the closest urban comparison. Singapore is considered “greener” than Hong Kong, but only 3 percent of Singapore’s land area falls into protected parks, says Martelli. He worked at the Singapore zoo for 12 years before moving to Hong Kong for the Ocean Park job seven years ago. Although Singapore has greater variety of wildlife, a broader natural habitat is always preferable.
“There are always the same questions about the value of wildlife, and there are many levels of value,” he says. “There is the emotional value. There is the aesthetic value, an ecological value, a utilitarian value for species that have an economic impact.” The economic relevance of macaques is small for Hong Kong (they aren’t eaten or sold), he says, but they are priceless for the value
they provide to park visitors, for their dispersal of natural fruit seeds, and by providing Hong Kong’s ecology with greater biological diversity.
Macaques were thought to have lived in the region long ago, but vanished. The present-day population finds its roots in Hong Kong’s colonial government. British colonial authorities introduced rhesus macaques a century ago during construction of the Kowloon Reservoirs. The monkeys were expected to eat the fruit from strychnos plant, the source of strychnine. The poison is toxic to humans but doesn’t harm macaques. The monkey population quickly boomed. In the 1950s, pet owners released long- tailed macaques, which interbred with those reintroduced by the British.
Not all governments see the value of macaques, Martelli admits. Some would prefer to kill them off. He dismissed that policy as inhumane and as well as more expensive in the long-term. The monkeys, he says, become more difficult to capture and relocate. Then they cause problems in areas where they have moved.
The endoscopic tubectomy procedure seems simple enough, but the preparations take several days. A surveyor sets out feed for the macaques inside one of many immense green cages, which the AFCD keeps throughout the macaques’ range. When enough monkeys are making regular feeding visits, the door is shut with a remote control device. A monkey-catcher pushes the animals into smaller cages where they can be injected with a sedative.
The actual surgery takes Martelli only a couple of minutes. Another vet gives each monkey a small tattoo denoting what medical treatment has been undertaken and to which troupe the monkey belongs. Vets transfer the animals back to smaller cages, where they revive after the effects of the sedation wear off.
After a few hours, the AFCD releases the monkeys back into the wild. Macaques which recently gave birth reunite with their infants. But these baby monkeys will have no more brothers or sisters. There will be others nonetheless. Plenty of adult females have avoided capture to give birth again next year.