Green monkeys wanted dead or alive
July 28, 2003 Edition -1
Sugar Hill (Barbados): Farmers call them pests. Scientists want their kidneys. Hunters trap and shoot them, and tourists hope to see them leaping from trees.
There are 14 000 green monkeys living on this tropical Caribbean island - one for every 20 people - and they are sought after for reasons ranging from a bounty on their tails to their use in polio vaccines.
Historians believe the monkeys arrived on slave ships from West Africa in the 17th century - either as pets, or for food. Today, islanders have a love-hate relationship with the small primates.
"They eat almost everything," complained farmer Keith Forde, 56. "I've planted banana trees for them alone."
A dozen or so hunters work under the government's bounty programme, which pays $7.50 (about R57) for each monkey killed.
To earn the govern-ment bounty, hunters are required to bring in 7.6cm of the monkey's tail.
"A week never passed that we wouldn't catch monkeys," said Emerson Benskin, 33, who gave up monkey-trapping after he found work on a farm.
The Barbados Primate Research Centre pays $25 (R188) for monkeys unharmed, arguing that the 1 500 brought in alive every year make good research subjects.
Sometimes, though, the centre takes their kidneys to make polio vaccines. That has angered animal rights groups, but turned the centre into a major source of the vaccine - with about 70% of the world's supply coming from its monkeys.
The centre sells about 800 monkeys each year to various firms and other research centres, for $1 500 (R11 250) each, said Jean Baulu, a Canadian primatologist and the centre's owner.
Baulu said scientists use the monkeys' kidney cells because they reproduce several times without mutating.
That means one pair of kidneys from green monkeys can produce many more vaccine doses than cells from other animals.
Money can also be made from selling monkey babies as pets - $75 (R563) each - or convincing tourists to be snapped with a monkey.
Roger Wells, one of the many locals who hunt monkeys, says there are so many monkeys that they are not under threat.
"We certainly don't want to see them (the monkeys) eradicated, and there's certainly not much chance of that happening." - Sapa-AP
