42 aslife

HCMC

It is a big day at the Dao TienEndangered Primate SpeciesCentre. Two visiting veterinar-ians are preparing to conducthealth checks and DNA testson the preserve’s newestresidents, Hoa and Binh, a pairo golden-cheeked gibbons—and sisters—who have been inquarantine since their arrival.Aterwards, the vets will t ourpygmy lorises with radio collarsin preparation or their releaseinto the wild. And some time inthe middle o it all, Dao Tien’srst Vietnamese research internwill arrive.The excitement, however, hasmade Binh uneasy.Unlike her sister, Binh isreusing to cooperate. As she becomes more agitated, theexpression on primate special-ist Lee Butler’s ace begins tosour. It’s becoming clear to himthat Binh will not go quietly. Hewill have to enter the enclosurewith head keeper NguyenTrung Thanh, capture Binh witha net and then administer thesedative.Everyone is eeling sorryor Binh, but Dao Tien directorMarina Kenyon, PhD sees the bright side. “That standosh-ness will make her great in theorest one day,” she says.This small island just beyondthe entrance to Cat Tien Na-tional Park is where Binh willtake her rst step towards thatgoal. Established in 2008, DaoTien is the rst project o theEndangered Asian Species Trust(EAST), a charity established bythe Monkey World Ape RescueCentre in Dorset, England, thesanctuary eatured or morethan a decade in the documen-tary series

Monkey Business and Monkey Life

. The mission oEAST is to abate the wildlietrade in Asia through rescue,rehabilitation, research andeducation.It is a natural extension o thework that has been carried outsince 1987 at Monkey World,where hundreds o primatesrom Europe and Asia haveound reuge. Whereas MonkeyWorld provides a permanenthome or rescued primates,Dao Tien seeks to re-establishwild populations and conductconservation studies that protectthem against uture threats.

Plight of the Primates

Currently, Dao Tien is home to27 gibbons, eight lorises andtwo black- shanked doucs. Thetrade in all three primates is ille-gal in Vietnam, but black marketchannels continue to circumventovertaxed authorities and eedthe demand or primate pets.“It’s not hard to get a pet gibbon i you ask the right people,”says Kenyon. “Even i youknow nothing, you could soonask a pet shop or nd the rightplace, and i you wave enoughmoney around—about ve, sixhundred dollars—you’ll have apet gibbon in a week.”The gurative price o secur-ing a gibbon is ar higher. Tocapture a baby gibbon, huntersshoot its parents and adolescentsiblings. The slaughtered gibbons can then be sold as bush-meat or or use in traditionalmedicine. The orphaned babiesnd their way to tourist centresor into the hands o afuentindividuals. (The exchange oexotic pets remains part o thelavish git-giving culture amongthe rich despite its illegality.)Sadly, pet gibbons essentiallyhave a shel lie o less than adecade or the same reason thattheir parents and siblings areuseless to pet traders. When agibbon reaches 7 or 8 years oage, it will begin to bite andattack its owner as part o itsnatural play. When this hap-pens, they’re oten abandonedor killed.“To keep a social primate onits own is just cruel,” says Ke-nyon. “They don’t domesticate.They’ll never be a pet.”Dao Tien gets that messageout by working with localinternational schools to educatechildren o afuent amilies,some o whom may own petprimates. The goal is to sensitizethem to the animals, and itseems to be working; a recentcolouring activity turned uppictures o gibbons outttedwith deensive claws, stones tothrow at hunters and pouches toprotect their young.

Healing Wounds

It would be a mistake, however,to view the demand end o thepet trade as symptomatic oregional culture. Many o theprimates at Monkey World have been conscated rom Europeanowners, and the United Statesregisters as the second mostprotable market or wildlieproducts ater China. The DaoTien team has seen evidencethat this is not just an Asian

On a small island in Cat Tien National Park, a group o conservationists has bigplans to counter the trade in endangered primates through rehabilitation, researchand education. By

Tom DiChristopher

“To keep a social primate on its own is just cruel. They don’t domesticate. They’llnever be a pet” – Marina Kenyon