By Lindi van Rooyen
He aimed his gun at the female vervet monkey, cocked it and fired. She fell to the ground and her baby, clutching her neck, screamed. Hurriedly the poacher grabbed the youngster. The little one would fetch a good price on the black market.
This horrifying scenario repeats itself daily between November and February every year during the monkeys' breeding season. Consequently, these killings have led authorities to place vervet monkeys on the list of endangered species.
Largely considered vermin in South Africa, vervet monkeys have been on the Cites (Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species) list since 1974.
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| 'The monkeys are endangered but people are denying it' |
But South Africa declared them "protected" only last September. To add to the problem, some farmers in Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal shoot and kill the monkeys because they destroy their crops. Others hunt the animals as a recreational sport.
Monika Flis, a volunteer at the Riverside Wildlife Rehabilitation and Environmental Education Centre, spoke about the hazards facing the monkeys.
"The monkeys are endangered but people are denying it. Many farmers come from a generation when it was okay to shoot monkeys when they ate fruit on their farms. Some get together for a braai, get drunk and then hunt the monkeys for sport."
Many people think the monkeys are still plentiful because they see them at many holiday resorts, game parks and farms.
"Monkeys are clever creatures who learn very quickly that where there are people there is food. A troop of monkeys will move into that area, but will soon be killed. Another troop previously residing deeper in the bush will replace it and the same thing will happen.
"This cycle has carried on for so long that now there are no more 'back-up' troops to replace the ones killed at the forefront."
Flis said baby monkeys were in demand as pets and sold for anything between R500 and R1500.
"By killing the mother, the poacher is left with a nice bundle of cash for the festive season. The buyer gets a unique gift but there's one less monkey to carry on the line of vervet monkeys."
Flis warned that people should not keep the monkeys as pets.
"Monkeys can be incredibly cute but people don't realise that they make very bad pets. They are intelligent animals that learn very quickly where the food is kept in the house and how to unscrew bottle tops.
"They hang from your curtain rails, break your ornaments and climb through neighbours' windows to raid their refrigerators. As soon as this happens, the monkey is either placed in a cage or sold to testing laboratories. Sometimes they are killed or given to the wildlife rehabilitation centres."
The centre is rehabilitating more than 600 vervet monkeys, a number that grows by the day. "It costs us about R4 000 a week to feed the monkeys and other animals and the centre is running out of funds," Flis said.
"We ask people to leave the monkeys alone during the breeding season. They belong in the wild and are not happy when they are not with a family of other monkeys."
- This article was originally published on page 5 of Saturday Star on November 27, 2004
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