long tail macaques

the woman volunteers at the zoo today at the wildlife story telling station. she finds out that around 80 of our poor friends the long tail macaques are culled every year due to public complaints. There are just 800 left in our forests. Sadly for certain condo residents and golfers, these beautiful indigenous creatures are regarded simply as pests. when AVA is called down, it is often a death sentence for the offending animal as once they are caught, no one really knows what to do with them.

unpleasant human-monkey encounters are caused partly by insufficient growth of fruits in the forest, which brings the macaque population to the fringes of the forests, but mainly because these monkeys have learnt to associate humans with food, particularly the delivishly sugary, salty, MSG kinds.

what we can do to save these macaques is simply to stop feeding them, plant more trees (join in the effort on 27 Nov at the zoo!), and to stop complaining.

whining residents and golfers seem to think "the forest has moved pal, so should you." well it doesn't quite work that way.

yet it makes sense that people who choose to live or play near nature, love nature, doesn't it? they certainly love it enough to pay a premium for a little heaven in those biomimetic developments by the nature reserves that are painstakingly expensively internationally acclaimed-ly designed and engineered to look just like the real thing! "invite nature in for breakfast," they scream on their advertising brochures!

no wonder the wildlife is confused.

these people do love nature. the disney version. they should go live in a theme park instead.