The #1 source for news about monkeys and apes

["JULIEN DEVEREUX" <julien AT metropolismag.com>]

>From http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB100144388726039480.htm
(subscribers only)

Brazen, Organized Monkey Troops
 Threaten New Guinea's Rainforest

 By TIMOTHY MAPES 
 Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
 


 JAYAPURA, Indonesia -- Yopi Muskita has spent the last seven
 years studying monkeys and their ways.

 Now he is ready to go to war.

 "If we don't kill them now, they can become very dangerous to our native 
species," says Mr. Yopi, a 42-year-old researcher for the World Wide Fund for 
Nature, as he walks along the edge of a tangled rainforest in search of a 
particularly aggressive monkey troop.

 New Guinea, the largest tropical island, is one of the least-explored and 
least-understood wilderness regions. Divided between the Indonesian province 
of Irian Jaya and the independent nation of Papua New Guinea, it is home to a 
diverse collection of plants and animals: kangaroos that live in trees, 
mammals that lay eggs, the world's tallest trees, its largest butterflies, 
its longest lizards; the list goes on.

 But the monkeys, daring and ravenous, are new arrivals.
 Environmentalists worry that the local wildlife, which evolved for millions 
of years without having to worry about them, could be quickly wiped out by a 
monkey onslaught.

 New Guinea's latest arrivals are commonly known as crab-eating macaques, or 
Macaca fascicularis in Latin, though they will eat most anything. Ferocious 
competitors, they spend up to 90% of their waking hours foraging for fruit, 
grass, insects and marine life, stealing food from a host of New Guinea's 
native species. The crab-eaters also find the eggs of New Guinea's rare birds 
and reptiles especially tasty. Some biologists fear they pose a major threat 
to the endangered Birds of Paradise, small to midsize forest birds whose 
brilliantly colored plumes and tail feathers have dazzled European fashion 
designers for centuries.

 'Weedy' Critters

 "These critters are the bubonic plague of invasive primates," says David 
Quammen, author of a book showing how the same
 monkeys helped wipe out the flightless Dodo bird from the Indian Ocean 
island of Mauritius after being introduced by Dutch sailors in the 17th 
century. Mr. Quammen argues that the crab-eaters are one of a number of what 
he calls "weedy" animals, highly mobile animals that can thrive in a wide 
range of environments and which include rats, cockroaches, pigeons and, of 
course, humans. As they spread, overwhelming local species unable to keep 
pace, the Earth will be transformed into "the Planet of Weeds," he predicts.

 No one really knows how the monkeys got here. Some say Allied troops brought 
them when driving out the Japanese at the end of  World War II, using them to 
ensure the local fruits and plants were safe to eat. A more plausible 
scenario is that the monkeys were ferried here as pets by the thousands of 
Indonesians who moved to this region after Jakarta seized it from the Dutch 
in the early 1960s, and that they escaped to build their own communities in 
the jungles.

 It also isn't clear exactly how many of the monkeys are roaming the forests 
of New Guinea, a landmass nearly the size of Malaysia and Thailand combined. 
The World Wide Fund for Nature says at least six troops of between 20 and 30 
each have been identified on the fringes of the forests near human 
settlements on the Indonesian side of the border. Scientists haven't ventured 
further into the  jungle to see if the monkeys are spreading out of view, 
however.

 Containment Options

 Mr. Yopi, a native of Indonesia's famed Spice Islands, spent years living in 
the forests of Sulawesi, gathering monkey blood for studies on how the 
primates transmit diseases -- including the herpes B virus, harmless to 
monkeys but frequently fatal to humans. The stocky, curly-haired researcher 
soon developed relationships with his studies, who recognized him as long as 
he didn't alter his  appearance from day to day. He has little enthusiasm for 
plans to shoot the macaques or hunt them down with dogs, but fears there  is 
no alternative.

 Some local residents have developed a soft spot for the primates, 
distinguished by the pads on their bottoms that make it easier to sit in 
trees for long stretches, and hope the monkeys' lives can be spared. That is 
the government's wish too. Mackbon, the local government's point man on the 
topic, suggests that trapping the monkeys and selling them to medical 
laboratories could help raise  badly needed cash; crab-eaters are among the 
most widely used monkeys in research experiments. "I've heard that the price 
of these monkeys is quite good, especially in overseas markets," he says.

 Ethical qualms aside, most environmentalists believe it would be nearly 
impossible to wipe out the highly intelligent and agile
 monkeys using traps alone. "With trapping, if you miss a few, they escape 
deeper into the forest, and you've got an even more intractable problem than 
before," says John Burke Burnett, executive director of the Indo Pacific 
Conservation Alliance, who calls the monkeys an "ecosystem cancer" that will 
reappear elsewhere unless it is eliminated.

 Agustinus Yumame, a lean, 32-year-old bean farmer, knows how difficult 
snaring these monkeys will be. Every day, armed with a two-foot machete, he 
patrols his bean fields, which sit on the edge of a dense forest of tall 
trees and creepers. Raids of 20 or more  monkeys are becoming increasingly 
common, and sophisticated, he says. "Sometimes when they attack they leave a 
guard up in the tree. He keeps watch and then calls out when a human comes 
along and they all run away," he says.

 The monkeys know when his cassava plants are ready to harvest, he contends, 
and they turn up to dig out the roots. "We can't go  anywhere; we need to 
constantly guard our plants," he grumbles, standing bare-foot in his fields 
as he warily eyes about a dozen brown-haired, long-tailed monkeys swinging 
through the trees, some fifty meters (165 feet) from his beanstalks. "The 
government should come and kill them all as soon as possible."

 Quantifying Liability

 To be sure, scientists don't have much evidence the monkeys have harmed 
native wildlife. Several studies have shown a drop in the number of Birds of 
Paradise and other species, but no serious examination has been done on the 
role the monkeys have played in that decline.

 Yet there is ample evidence from around the world that monkeys and other 
so-called invasive species can be just as dangerous as better-known threats 
to New Guinea's environment, like logging or mining or population growth.

 While damage from mining, for example, can be cleaned up over time, invasive 
species tend to stay forever and can alter the ecological balance in 
irreversible ways. That is what happened in Guam, where the arrival of the 
brown tree snake after World War II led to the extinction of nearly all of 
the Pacific island's native birds in just a few years. Hawaii offers another 
classic example: The state accounts for about a quarter of all endangered 
species in the U.S. as pigs, goats, coconut palms and strawberry guava plants 
introduced by humans push aside the unique plant and animal life that 
developed there over thousands of years.

 Monkeys aren't New Guinea's only invaders. The Climbing Perch, a fresh-water 
fish, can survive several days out of water using a special chamber above the 
gills to breath air, and can wriggle long distances along the ground using 
its fins and gills. When larger local fish try to eat it, the resourceful 
perch extends sharp spines, often killing its would-be predator.

 But for New Guinea's monkeys, time may be running out. The World Wide Fund 
for Nature plans to hold a meeting of government officials, scientists and 
environmental groups here next month to devise a joint strategy for 
eliminating them from the forests, one way or another.

 "One feels sorry for the monkeys; it wasn't their fault. But they're just in 
the wrong place," says Mr. Burnett. "It's either the monkeys or the New 
Guinea fauna. Macaca fascicularis is doing just fine in many other places, 
but New Guinea species? They've got no place else to go."

 -- Rin Hindryati contributed to this article.

 Write to Timothy Mapes at tim.mapes AT awsj.com