Fiona Macleod Vervet monkeys who have been terrifying staff and patients at the Ga-Rankuwa hospital near Pretoria have become part of an ambitious pilot project to save the species in South Africa.
Volunteers at the Vervet Monkey Foundation trapped the Ga-Rankuwa troop of 15 this week and moved them to cages in a Johannesburg suburb. They will be kept there for a month before being released on a small private game farm near Cullinan. It is the first time in South Africa that a troop of wild monkeys will be released back into the wild. As a result of human development, a growing number of orphans and small troops are being kept in enclosures at various “rehabilitation” centres throughout the country. But their chances of ever being released are slim. The Ga-Rankuwa animals will be joined by other monkeys from the foundation’s rehabilitation project in Tzaneen.
Officials at Ga-Rankuwa hospital gratefully accepted the foundation’s intervention after an elderly man who had been feeding the monkeys died early this year and the troop moved on to the hospital grounds in search of food. The monkeys have been conducting food raids in the hospital wards, intimidating patients and staff. “Individual babies have successfully been released into wild troops, but this is a first. We plan to study these monkeys in their new home carefully,” says Arthur Hunt, director of the foundation. Though monkeys are closely related to humans, they are the cousins nobody wants. Ever since the Department of Finance classified them as vermin in 1936, they have been virtually exterminated by farmers. “You do not need a permit to kill them, so no records are kept. At one time you could find vervet monkeys almost everywhere in South Africa; today it is estimated there are less than 250 000, and their death rate far exceeds their birth rate,” says Hunt. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites), which regulates trade in natural resources, lists South Africa’s monkeys in its Appendix II as vulnerable to extinction. But when the IUCN- World Conservation Union, the international scientific authority, released its updated Red Data list of endangered species last week, monkeys in South Africa did not receive a mention. “That’s because the scientists do not deem them worthy of protection. It’s a throwback to their classification as pests,” says Isobel Hitz, who heads the Vervet Monkey Foundation’s branch in Gauteng. The government does not have a national strategy on the protection and rehabilitation of primates. “Every province uses their own ordinances for transportation and release,” says Sonia Meintjies, national Cites permits officer in the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (Deat). The result is a proliferation of “rehabilitation” centres populated by monkeys who have either been orphaned or confiscated by conservation authorities. Ironically, when the people who run these centres – mostly women – try to release the monkeys, the authorities refuse to give them the necessary transport permits. “There are up to 2 000 primates currently being held in about 10 officially sanctioned centres around the country,” says Karen Trendler, director of the country’s largest wildlife rehabilitation centre, Wildcare. “For five years we have been begging the provinces and Deat for a national policy.” Residents of Melville may be surprised to learn that one of these centres, with about 60 monkeys in tiny cages, is thriving in the shadow of the SABC tower. Zoologist Antoinette Jurgens, who runs the centre, says she receives up to 100 monkeys each year from Gauteng conservation officials.
The provincial officials say there is a de facto moratorium on the movement of primates, particularly across provincial borders, because of fears this will spread diseases and promote genetic contamination of the primates.
“There are at least three sub-species of vervet monkeys in South Africa. If you mix them willy-nilly, you can cause a tremendous amount of genetic harm,” says Peter Lloyd, principal nature conservation scientist at Western Cape Nature Conservation. Until a strategy is found to deal with the fall-out of this moratorium, it will be up to NGOs like the Vervet Monkey Foundation to find solutions. The Ga-Rankwua hospital’s public relations officer, Babe Mosuwe, says management appealed to Pretoria University’s veterinary school and the national zoo to remove the monkeys from the hospital. “Our attempt was unsuccessful because the national zoo claims to be overcrowded and no one was prepared to take them,” she says.