Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
shops in the market, though we found no evidence of bones of macaques.
Along the NRs running east to west connecting Vietnam and Laos, factor-
ies, mines, and large-scale farmlands have recently been established or are
being constructed, and they are expected to lead to an increase in bushmeat
consumption via trading and by new workers who are mainly Vietnamese.
Further study is necessary to assess if these developments will affect
macaque populations (see Box 3.1).
Box 3.1 A possible decline in population of the long-tailed
macaque (
Macaca fascicularis
) in northeastern Cambodia
Benjamin P. Y-H. Lee
This note reports on the possible decline of the long-tailed macaque (
Macaca
fascicularis
) in northeastern Cambodia. After a recent research trip to the
northeastern part of the country to investigate the wild meat trade (31 May-
2 July 2008), it appeared evident that long-tailed macaques were not easily
observed. The survey investigated the wild meat trade in the central market
of Ban Lung, in the capital town of Ratanakiri, as well as conducting field
trips to rural provinces for interviews with hunters. Throughout the travel-
ling period, the occurrence of all wildlife species, including macaques, was
noted.
Being assigned “Least Concern” IUCN conservation status (Ong and
Richardson, 2008), long-tailed macaques have been deemed “not in danger”
in northeastern Cambodia by Timmins and Soriyun (1998) who reported
seeing groups of
M. fascicularis
on five different days in mid 1998 in a sur-
vey of wildlife in Tonle San and Tonle Srepok in northeastern Cambodia.
They cautioned that many groups may have been undetected during their
survey, and according to the limited field surveys in eastern and northeastern
Cambodia, the troop size of long-tailed macaques did not seem to exceed
ten individuals (Timmins and Soriyun, 1998, Walston
et al
., 2001). This
may be a sign that the monkeys were subjected to heavy hunting pressure
as Wheatley
et al
. (2002) reported that high hunting rates in Palau resulted
in small groups.
It has been reported that a large-scale harvest of wild
M. fascicularis
is
happening throughout Cambodia (Campbell
et al
., 2006, Rawson, 2007)
and began sometime in 2006 (Pollard
et al
., 2007) in response to heightened
demand from “monkey farms” in Cambodia, Vietnam and China (Campbell
et al
., 2006, Pollard
et al
., 2007). The wild-caught macaques are used mainly
for bio-medical testing. A monkey farm in Cambodia has publicly admitted
