1,200 monkeys stuck at Charles River Labs have reason to signify
HOUSTON, Texas––Twelve hundred illegally imported wild-caught long-tailed macaques at last report were still waiting at a Charles River Laboratory warehouse near Houston for Charles River Laboratories, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and potential sanctuary caretakers to decide what will become of them.
As recently as March 15, 2023 the macaques were apparently in imminent danger of being flown back to the Cambodian dealers who allegedly had them captured for sale to Charles River Laboratories. This would almost certainly put the macaques back into the international laboratory supply traffic, at financial benefit to the dealers, who would thereby be enabled to sell the same macaques twice.
Return to the wild unlikely
Alternatively, the Cambodian government might try to return the macaques to the wild.
However, the macaques are believed to have been caught from many locations. After months of habituation to captivity and with no certainty of releasing the macaques back to familiar habitat, occupied by friendly related troupes, their chances of surviving long post-release would probably be low.
In addition, the macaques have now potentially been exposed to infectious diseases, both from each other and from human handlers, which releasing them might spread in the wild.
PETA seeks sanctuary placement
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals [PETA] staff and volunteers meanwhile appear to be keeping the Charles River Laboratories site under close surveillance amid a publicity campaign that has reportedly inundated the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service with appeals to keep the macaques in the U.S. and to place them in sanctuary care.
(See Charles River Labs sending bootlegged macaques back to traffickers.)
But that is much more easily said than done, NBC News Investigations Unit senior producer Anna Schecter reported on March 16, 2023.
But no sanctuary is nearly big enough
The Born Free USA primate sanctuary at Dilley, Texas, the biggest for macaques in the U.S., would need to expand its present facilities more than tenfold to accommodate 1,200 more.
No other U.S. sanctuary now housing macaques could handle more than about a dozen without funding for previously unplanned major expansion of both macaque housing and caretaking staff..
“Over the past six months,” Schecter wrote, “officials with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service have contacted at least two animal sanctuaries to inquire about the cost of housing and feeding the primates for the rest of their lives.”
“Not going to be safe at the other end”
Acknowledging that “The monkeys are not going to be safe at the other end,” if returned to Cambodia, Born Free USA program director Liz Tyson told Schecter that Born Free USA, before agreeing to accept the 1,200 macaques, would need a commitment of $125 million to cover staffing costs, buying land, and building suitable macaque housing.
Reported Schecter, “Angela Grimes, the chief executive of Born Free USA, said the organization was first contacted by Fish & Wildlife in September 2022. The agents were looking for a home for 360 monkeys.
“Fish and Wildlife officials called back in February and said the number of monkeys had ballooned to 1,200, Grimes said.”
“No place with space for 1,200 monkeys”
Added Grimes, “There’s no place with space for 1,200 monkeys. The government was struggling with that. We were also struggling with that.”
Wrote Schecter, “Grimes said she was hoping to work with the federal government to come up with a plan to arrange for the necessary funding to set up housing for the monkeys. But then she felt like the rug had been pulled out from under her when PETA announced it had information suggesting that the government planned to ship the monkeys back to Cambodia.”
Complained Grimes, “We were not given the full opportunity to engage in a serious conversation to come up with solutions that would possibly work.”
“Send them all to Primarily Primates!”
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service also called the Primarily Primates sanctuary just north of San Antonio, a much smaller and older facility than the present Born Free USA sanctuary, though considerably upgraded in recent years.
“Send them all to Primarily Primates!” was a common refrain at anti-vivisection protests circa 30 years ago, but even then was an impractical demand.
“We said we could definitely take some of the females to start, and maybe more as we learned additional information,” Primarily Primates executive director Krystal Mathis told Schecter.
Finished Schecter, “Primarily Primates and Born Free USA both said a new structure for housing a dozen rescued monkeys can run more than $100,000. The animals also need daily feeding and frequent veterinary care requiring staff and resources.”
Who has $125 million?
Charles River Laboratories, according to the Barron’s business news portal, has current net worth of nearly $10 billion. But short of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service convicting Charles River Laboratories and/or Charles River top executives of criminal violations of the federal Lacey Act, there would appear to be no legal mechanism to force the company to pay for the future care of the 1,200 macaques.
Further complicating the situation, the National Institutes of Health has for years complained of a shortage of macaques available for research use. U.S. laboratories used nearly 72,000 monkeys, most of them macaques, in 2021 alone.
(See Crocodile tears in the monkey labs as Charles River suspends imports.)
Even though the 1,200 macaques in question were illegally imported after capture from the wild, in violation of biosecurity requirements, it is not out of the question that the NIH might try to keep the 1,200 in the U.S. biomedical research system, somehow.
Stolen from Thai temples?
Meanwhile, Guardian Southeast Asia correspondent Rebecca Ratcliffe hinted on February 25, 2023 that the 1,200 macaques might not have been captured from the wild in Cambodia at all.
Instead, Ratcliffe indicated, the macaques might have been captured from temple grounds in Thailand and then been smuggled across the 500-mile-long relatively open border between Thailand and Cambodia before being sold as “captive-bred” in Cambodia.
“For decades,” Ratcliffe opened, “Tham Pha Mak Ho temple in north-east Thailand has been home to crowds of rhesus macaques. Every morning monks feed them with rice and fruit, while tourists give them bananas and seeds bought from the local street vendors.
“But over recent months, local people began to notice that when they came with offerings of food, fewer monkeys seemed to greet them.”
Farms in Laos?
“There are some farms in Laos where we have seen this particular species ending up,” said Wildlife Friends Foundation of Thailand found Edwin Wiek.
Before the global COVID-19 pandemic erupted in early 2020, Wiek told Ratcliffe, “The price of long-tailed macaques on the illegal wildlife market was really low – $20 or $30 apiece. I wouldn’t call that a really sustainable kind of wildlife trade. But now the prices went up to five to 10 times more,” even as the price of a macaque from Charles River Laboratories soared to $33,000.
Continued Ratcliffe, “Lieutenant Colonel Anek Nakthorn, deputy police superintendent of the environmental crime division, said any locations with monkey populations were considered vulnerable to traffickers, adding that ‘both tourist attractions and non-tourist attractions, temples with monkeys, are on our watchlist.’
“He was aware of at least 10 cases in central Thailand since COVID,” Ratcliffe summarized. Closed-circuit television had been installed as a precaution at some sites, he said.”
Two men were arrested in mid-February in Nakhon Sawan, “in lower northern Thailand, where Anek is based,” Ratliffe noted, after they were allegedly caught in the act of trying to capture nine macaques with the use of food containing tranquilizers.
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“Tiger Temple” and now, these “holy” men, all of whom are flouting every truly holy Law.
Despicable.
Sharing with gratitude.