By Bridget Di Certo
Tuesday, 15 May 2012
Phnom Penh Post
Macaques
awaiting export for medical trials are kept in cruel and ‘stressful’
conditions at a breeding facility in Kampong Chhnang province.
Photograph: BUAV
Up to 50 Cambodian macaques plucked from their fast-diminishing habitat
are squeezed into a concealed compartment in the boot of a sedan and
covered with broken ice to keep them quiet.
Then, under cover of
night, the monkeys are smuggled into a breeding facility in Kampong
Chhnang province, where forged documents will show them as being
legally bred before they are exported to China, Laos, Vietnam – most
likely for toxicity testing.
The deception is an all-too-common occurrence, according to investigations conducted by UK-based animal protection group BUAV in February of this year.
“We
are disappointed to have had no response from the Cambodian government
or the Cambodia CITES [Convention on International Trade in Endangered
Species] Management Authority regarding our concerns,” Sarah Kite,
BUAV’s director of special projects, said of the lack of government
attention to its investigations.
BUAV’s investigations took them to a Korean-owned monkey-breeding facility in Kampong Chhnang.
There, macaques were kept in conditions BUAV described as “cruel”.
Infants
were separated from their mothers, and monkeys were kept in individual
barren cages or large concrete pens, BUAV field officers reported.
“The
growing plundering of the macaque populations from their native forests
in Southeast Asia to feed the breeding farms for the international
research industry is an issue we have been raising for many years and
one that urgently needs to be addressed,” Kite said.
BUAV said
the trapping of wild animals is extremely lucrative, with trappers
netting between US$50 and $150 per wild macaque, depending on gender and
age.
Laboratories pay up to $2,000 per animal.
“We
believe that Cambodia is breaching CITES regulations by allowing what
appears to be a largely unregulated trade in long-tail macaques that has
resulted in the apparent indiscriminate and intensive trapping of wild
monkeys to establish the numerous breeding and supply farms that have
been set up,” she said.
Macaque exports from Cambodia jumped
exponentially over a 10-year period, from 200 total between 1999 and
2003 to 32,392 between 2004 and 2008, according to the CITES database.
“Of
particular concern are the inhumane and cruel methods used to trap wild
monkeys and the inadequate conditions in which primates were housed at
primate breeding facilities,” Kite added.
In their report to
CITES, BUAV said: “Many of the facilities exporting [macaques] in
Cambodia do not have a reliable capability to produce second-generation
offspring. They were established and continue to be replenished using
animals from wild populations.”
Macaque populations are already suffering under the rate of deforestation in Cambodia.
Primary rainforest cover feel from over 70 per cent in 1970 to just 3.1 per cent in 2007.
The
group points to a “sophisticated transborder wild-life trafficking
network” that involves wild macaques caught in Cambodia and smuggled to
Vietnam, China or Lao using forged CITES permits.
The Cambodian
government must better implement their obligations under CITES and
record exports of macaques caught in the wild, BUAV said.
In its
March letter to the government, the group identifies several
circumstances in which there is evidence of exports, or export permits
issued by the Cambodian CITES Management Authority, but no record of
these export transactions on the CITES database.
Deputy director
of the CITES Management Authority of Cambodia, Suon Phalla, to whom
BUAV addressed the results of their February 2012 investigations, could
not be reached by the Post yesterday.
Ministry of
Agriculture Secretary of State Uk Sokhonn, and Deputy Director General
of the Scientific Authority of Cambodia, Ung Sam Ath, who were carbon
copied into the correspondence could also not be reached.
To contact the reporter on this story: Bridget Di Certo at bridget.dicerto@phnompenhpost.com
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