The #1 source for news about monkeys and apes

[Josh Greenman <joshg1973 AT yahoo.com>]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20021010/ap_wo_en_po/malaysia_nigeria_gorillas_1

 

Malaysia to surrender gorillas smuggled from Nigeria

Thu Oct 10, 2:01 AM ET

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Malaysia will surrender four baby gorillas to a breeding facility approved by a wildlife protection agency after confirming that a they had been illegally bought by a zoo here, a newspaper reported Thursday.

Animal rights activists think the apes had probably been poached from African rain forests.

Government officials said the Malaysian zoo in the northern city of Taiping would be given a warning, The Star newspaper reported Thursday.

"We are very upset that this has happened," Science, Technology and Environment Minister Law Hieng Ding was quoted as saying. "The issue has tarnished the country's image."

The zoo will send the animals to a facility chosen by the secretariat of the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species, the main global agency fighting animal trafficking, Law told the newspaper. No specific country or facility was mentioned.

The U.S.-based International Primate Protection League raised a protest in April that one male and three female gorillas were shipped to Malaysia in January by intermediaries using false documents that claimed the apes had been born in Abuja Zoo in Nigeria.

The group, based in Summerville, South Carolina, however, said there was no known captive breeding program for gorillas in Africa.

Conservationists believe the animals were illegally captured in Nigeria's central African neighbor, Cameroon.

"This is really good news," Shirley McGreal, chairwoman of the league, told The Associated Press in an e-mail. "The Malaysian government has done the right thing."

The Taiping Zoo initially insisted that the acquisition was above board, but Law said that an investigation had confirmed the allegations.

Zoo officials and Malaysian wildlife authorities were not immediately available for comment.

A shortage of Asian orangutans, which are native to Malaysia and Indonesia, have pushed up the demand by zoos for African gorillas.

The hunting and capture of gorillas in Uganda, Rwanda, Congo, Cameroon, Nigeria and Gabon, where remaining populations of the primates are threatened by deforestation and hunting, is officially banned.

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