Barbados Green Monkey

CARIB WILD

The

Green Monkey

Article Provided By The Barbados Wildlife Reserve

of Barbados

Over the last fifty years, the focus on the island of Barbados shifted towards promoting a strong tourism sector causing sugar production to significantly decrease and plantations to almost disappear. With limited plantations, monkeys have found themselves leaving the gullies and making their way into our gardens.

A Brief History

In the mid-17th century, monkeys came from West Africa to the Caribbean on slave ships and were later sold as exotic pets. However, many were later released into the wild by their owners and quickly became seen as agricultural pests so that by 1680 a bounty of five shillings was given by the government for every head delivered to a parish church warden.

Over the next hundred years, the monkey population stabilised, and monkeys lived mainly in the gullies of the island’s four most northern parishes, which at the time had a more limited population. The gullies were used for cutting firewood and as marginal lands for growing produce and fruit trees. By the 1950’s however, with the advent of kerosene and a reduced need for firewood, the abandoned gullies soon became re-forested. This offered a protected environment where monkeys flourished, as food was never a limiting factor with the nearby availability of crops such as sugar cane, (mainly on plantations).

Monkeys and Agriculture

For farmers, monkeys pose an understandable threat to their livelihoods and there are many farmers who experience moderate to severe crop losses. So, what can they do to discourage monkeys from their land?

Scarecrows, noise repellants, and brightly coloured flags et al, are all good strategies but only work for a short period of time. This is because monkeys are highly intelligent and acclimate quickly, therefore making these strategies short-lived. Instead, how about planting fruit trees back in the gullies to encourage monkeys to stay closer to home or further away from your personal crops?

Why not rethink the crops you plant and where? Consider planting foods less attractive to the monkey, close to their forested habitats which acts as a buffer and can help to minimize crop predation on the monkeys’ (and farmers) favourite foods. Also, in areas where the

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monkey population is most concentrated, why not try a different type of agricultural farming?

The Barbados Primate Research Center (BPRC)

Over the last 35 years, the Center has been active in helping to control the monkey population. It has helped farmers and stopped the increase in the numbers of monkeys on the island. Several surveys with farmers all over the island have confirmed the amount of crop damage and estimates of the monkey population to be decreasing. This is great news, but to stop the overall increase in the number of monkeys, an average of 1,000 monkeys a year are captured humanely by the Center, using self-triggering cages which farmers are instructed to bait every day. Captured monkeys are euthanised humanely by the Center’s veterinarians so that specific organs can be harvested and sent overseas to be used by organisations such as the World Health Organisation (WHO), for the safety testing of polio vaccines. (Since 1988, there has been a decrease of polio cases by more than 99 per cent. Since this disease is highly contagious with no cure, prevention is the only permanent solution. Without complete eradication, the WHO has calculated that the next ten years could see as many as 200,000 cases of polio per year!)

*The green monkeys’ organs have also been critical for the manufacture of autoimmune diagnostic kits.

Conservation

The Barbados Wildlife Reserve was created at the same time as the Primate Center, and has helped change the image of monkeys as pests into seeing them as a natural renewable wildlife resource that can be managed sustainably. The Reserve is comprised of two distinct forests and a gully. Three distinct monkey social groups are provisioned daily and allow visitors to appreciate the green monkeys of Barbados behaving in a natural way in their own habitats. Over the years, many other animals have been introduced in the Reserve especially birds, tortoises, deer and threatened Cuban iguanas. Barbadians see more monkeys than before since the animals have changed their foraging patterns from raiding plantations to attacking the crops on smaller gardens. They are still considered as agricultural pests but survey after survey has shown that the overall population size has remained largely the same.

The green monkeys of Barbados, as well as those in St. Kitts and Nevis, are unique in many ways, having adapted to small islands and growing human populations. Islands all over the world are notoriously poor in fauna where extinctions happen more frequently, so it is important to protect our wildlife. We are, after all, the stewards.

AT: If you are experiencing challenges with monkeys on your land or property, aggressive retaliations rarely works and can be dangerous to you, your family and pets. It has also been said that ignoring them works best as eventually they learn to take what they need and believe it or not, still leave enough for you.

FAST FACTS

• The Green Monkey of Barbados can live to an average of 12 years, and up to 30 in captivity

• Babies are born after 165 days gestation and appear blue. They do not have thick fur like adults but as they mature, the fur grows thicker and changes colour

• Adults have brown and grey thick fur with yellow and olive-green flecks

• Their hands and feet are paler than the rest of their bodies

• The tail tip, back of the thighs, and cheek whiskers are a golden yellow. In certain lights the monkey can appear to be totally green

• The monkeys have a black face

• Males have a pale blue scrotum

• Their favourite food is fruit such as the dunk, but they also eat nuts and seeds. If food is short they will eat bird eggs, lizards, mice and some insects

• They generally live in groups of fifteen to twenty

• Within a family group, males gain their dominance by their size, strength and their ability to fight. Females get their rank by the size of their families and generally have their first baby around the age of five

• An older female sibling will care for a newborn, forming strong family bonds

• Most infants are born during April and May

• From June to November they travel, eat, and drink from seven until eleven in the morning, and spend their afternoons resting in trees, and grooming. Grooming removes parasites and is a form of social bonding. May to December is when food is scarcer for the monkeys

• Their main defense mechanism is their loud staccato barking and quick movements

• They use different sounds to communicate to each other

The Barbados Wildlife Reserve continues to attract locals and visitors to the island, and has been voted as one of the most popular attractions on the island by Zagat (2008). Contact them to learn more about the conservation work they are doing and to arrange school and group visits.

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