NEWS
ACRES PRESS RELEASE
____________________________________________________________________
The Straits Times
5 May 2004
Smuggled monkey heads home to Africa
by Glenys Sim
A RARE South African monkey which was smuggled into Singapore six years ago and kept illegally as a pet, made its way to a new home in Zambia, Africa, at 1am today.
His flight out marked the end of a dramatic chapter in the life of the six-year-old primate, which was brought to Singapore by a sailor and bought by a man now in his late 40s. It took the authorities two months to locate the smuggled monkey and another year to find him a new home.
At his send-off yesterday, the Animal Concerns Research and Education Society (Acres) said it first got wind of the matter through the International Primate Protection League (IPPL) in the United States.
Acres president Louis Ng said the owner's daughter sent an e-mail message to IPPL in March last year, seeking a new home for the pet as he was starting to bite.
Mr Ng said the male vervet monkey, which could live for up to 30 years, had reached sexual maturity and this led to his aggressive behaviour.
It took Mr Ng two months to convince the owner's daughter to reveal the whereabouts of the monkey. She eventually led them to a factory in Tuas, where the animal was found chained inside a metal cage last May.
'The monkey's natural diet is fruits but he was being fed rice. And the water in the cage was stale. He was so used to staying in the cage that we took half an hour to pull him out by the chain around his neck,' said Mr Ng, 26.
'It was a good thing we found him because the owner was planning to release him at MacRitchie Reservoir.
'Since he is so used to being fed by humans, it would be likely that if the people at the reservoir didn't feed him, he might bite them. He might also be attacked by the other monkeys there,' Mr Ng added.
The monkey was taken to Singapore Zoo's quarantine facility. In the year he spent there, which cost the zoo $5,000, his weight increased from 4.2kg to 7kg, said zoo veterinarian Oh Soon Hock.
Assistant curator Biswajit Guha said they could not keep the animal because 'the zoo doesn't have any vervet monkeys and he is not part of the collection plan'.
This February, Acres contacted the Munda Wanga Sanctuary in Zambia, which provides shelter to orphaned and injured animals. It houses 50 vervet monkeys and agreed to accept the latest from Singapore.
The monkey was put in a custom-made wooden crate for his 11-hour flight to Johannesburg. The repatriation project cost Acres about $6,000.
The vervet monkey is a protected species under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites).
Anyone caught with the primate can be fined up to $5,000 or jailed for a year, or both.
The monkey's owner was fined $200 for flouting Cites, said the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority.
The AVA would not reveal his name, adding that 'he was very cooperative and assisted the AVA in the confiscation of the monkey'.
.........................................................................................................................................................