Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
settlements will be established along the roads and people will immigrate to
the localities where presently intact landscapes remain. The impact on non-
human primates from such human movements is the subject of future study.
Mining and factory construction and establishment may increase the hunting
pressure for bushmeat trade. Although guns were confiscated by the govern-
ment, villagers either hid or manufactured guns to hunt animals due to poor
gun control (Hamada
et al
.,
2007
).
The monkey farm business is now expanding in Laos and is managed
by companies from foreign countries. It was reported that 10
3
-10
4
long-
tailed macaques were annually exported to developed countries but it did
not appear that many monkeys were bred at the farms, as this far exceeds
our estimated national population. Rather they were thought to have been
brought from elsewhere (i.e., neighboring countries) and then subsequently
exported. However, the presumed origin countries have banned exportation of
wild-caught monkeys according to ratification of the Washington Convention
(CITES), which Thailand ratified in 1983, Vietnam in 1994, Cambodia in
1997, and Laos in 2004 (www.cites.org/eng/disc/parties/alphabet.shtml),
and so it is still unclear exactly what is happening. More work is needed to
uncover what proportion of the wild population is threatened by utilization
in trade, as the large volume of macaques being traded from Laos cannot all
be bred in farms.
Another concern of monkey farms is that it is suspected that monkeys would
escape from the farms, as the cages looked neither secure nor tough. Village
areas near monkey farms that are located farther north than the natural distribu-
tion area of long-tailed macaques are now being found to be inhabited by these
macaques (SP, personal observation). This indicates that macaque farms are
responsible of ethnophoresy (see Part III), as some long-tailed macaques are
being artificially carried and released beyond their natural range. This needs to
be monitored, as these monkeys may distort the macaque distribution and may
result in hybrid production with native macaques of other species.
Conclusion
The present surveys did not thoroughly delineate the exact distribution and pre-
sent status of long-tailed and rhesus macaques in Laos. However, we did find
that long-tailed macaques were found to be distributed to the area at 15.2˚N or
lower in Laos, both in the west and east of the Mekong River. Although the range
appears wide, the total population is estimated to be only 420-4,200 individuals.
Rhesus macaques were found to range in almost all areas of Laos, except in the
area west of the Mekong River in southern Laos. Populations of the two species
