Towards the end of last year, Long Tailed Macaques quietly slipped into Vulnerable status on the IUCN Red List. Previously, the crab eater macaques were a species of Least Concern.
For the scientific community a degraded change in the monkeys' conservation status was expected. After all, the macaques' global population numbers are declining rapidly.
The two major factors for their dropping numbers are habitat loss and removal of monkeys for biomedical research.
The COVID-19 pandemic did the long tailed macaques no favors. The race to develop vaccines on a global scale saw an explosion in the call for research primates. Macaques being easy to find, plentiful in numbers*, and relatively small and light make them the go-to monkey species for laboratory scientists.
From late 2019 until now, the demand for long tailed macaques may have risen from 50,000 annually to more than 450,000.
With a global (wild) population of less than Three million, harvesting nearly half a million macaques each year is obviously unsustainable.
Studies of geographically isolated macaque populations are currently sought after by academic researchers, worldwide. As conservation strategies change to reflect the precipitous loss of monkeys, knowing how to support thriving wild macaques better is more critical than ever.
There are several ways my study will help in the effort to conserve and protect the long tailed macaques of the North Jakarta mangroves.
As I work more on the six month overview of the NJMM survey, it's illuminating new ideas to aid conservation.
*Actually, the seemingly ubiquitous long tailed macaques are victims of their range and behavior. They are adaptable to urban areas and maintain a high ratio of time on the ground (versus the treetops) and are therefore much more visible to people than most monkey species. That creates a false perception of their total numbers.
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