In the face of objections from environmental organizations, Sri Lanka on Wednesday granted China’s request to import 100,000 endangered monkeys from the cash-strapped island country.
The request was made to his government by a privately held Chinese corporation affiliated to the animal breeders at Zoological Gardens, according to Gunadasa Samarasinghe, the senior official in Sri Lanka’s government of Agriculture.
“We won’t deliver the whole 100,000 in a single shipment. However, we took the plea into consideration because of the crop damage that monkeys have done around the nation. They won’t be removed from protected areas. Only the regions used for farming would be the emphasis, Samarasinghe informed the media.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has listed the toque macaque monkey as endangered since it is native to Sri Lanka.
Mahinda Amaraweera, Sri Lanka’s minister of agriculture, said last week that China’s request for 100,000 monkeys to be shown at more than 1,000 Chinese zoos may be taken into consideration.
According to the minister, “They want these monkeys for their zoos.” Although practically all live animal exports from Sri Lanka are prohibited, the sale that has been planned coincides with the nation’s worst-ever economic crisis.
This year, the cash-strapped island government deleted a number of species from its protected list, enabling farmers to slaughter wild boars, peacocks, and all three of its monkey species.
In certain regions of Sri Lanka, the toque macaque is infamous for destroying crops and even occasionally attacking humans.
The number of monkeys in Sri Lanka is estimated by the authorities to be between two and three million.
The Chinese embassy in this country, meantime, claimed that it is not aware of Sri Lanka’s transfer of “100,000” “endangered” toque macaque monkeys to a Chinese private enterprise for “experimental purposes.”
According to the mission’s statement, no such requests to permit the entry of monkeys from Sri Lanka have been made to the Chinese National Forestry and Grassland Administration, the body in charge of regulating the import and export of wild animals and plants.
The embassy cited China as one of the top nations in the world for wildlife protection legislation and law enforcement, noting that the nation had already adopted its wildlife protection law in 1988 and was a signatory to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) with a number of subsequent amendments.
The Chinese embassy in this country released a statement on Tuesday stating that “the Chinese government always attaches great importance to wildlife protection and actively fulfills international obligations.”