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FEATURED REPORT: $20,000 Monkeys & How Demand For Lab Animals Is Driving Illegal Trade In Endangered Macaques

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AceNewsDesk – A lucrative underground trade risks undermining research, creating new pandemics and pushing a recently abundant species to the brink

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Ace Press News From Cutting Room Floor: Published: Dec.08: 2023: The Guardian Environment News By Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield TELEGRAM Ace Daily News Link https://t.me/+PuI36tlDsM7GpOJe

Research published in the journal One Health reveals individual monkeys are being sold for between $20,000 and $24,000. Photograph: Jo-Anne McArthur/We Animals Media

In 2019, Jonah Sacha, a researcher at Oregon Health and Science University, received a delivery of 20 monkeys from Mauritius. As part of his research into stem-cell transplants as an HIV treatment, he performs tests on long-tailed macaques.

The captive-bred monkeys were legally imported using an approved vendor, and looked healthy. However, when Sacha tested them, one appeared to have latent tuberculosis (TB).

None of the monkeys could be used because Sacha needed disease-free animals to produce accurate research. “My feeling was one of utter despair; it set this project back by more than a year and a half,” he says.

The test also threw into question the source of the monkeys. The macaque could have contracted TB from a human while in captivity, or it could mean the monkey came from the wild – where TB is relatively common among macaque populations – and was then mis-sold as captive-bred.

“This is the heart of the matter: we don’t know,” says Sacha. “I’ve heard stories of people saying they received animals they thought were research-bred, then they get them, and they’re clearly not because they have found, for instance, little pellets from a shotgun in the animal. That’s a wild-caught animal.”

The incident sheds light on the murky world of importing monkeys for laboratory research. An international shortage of lab monkeys has driven up prices, incentivising a booming illicit trade. The problem risks undermining research, creating new pandemics, and fuelling wildlife trafficking. As the tradeexpands, a once-thriving species is now on the edge: in 2022, it was added to the IUCN list of endangered species. Some animal rights activists are calling to end the trade altogether.

An activist wearing a monkey mask protests against the trafficking of long-tailed macaques, the world’s most heavily traded primate species. Photograph: Bay Ismoyo/AFP/Getty Images

Long-tailed macaques are the most heavily traded primate species in the world, according to a paper published in September, and much of this is for laboratory research.

The US National Association for Biological Research says non-human primates remain a critical resource for research, with about 70,000 monkeys imported a year to study infectious diseases, the brain and the creation of new drugs. Difficulty getting monkeys is compromising important research, Sacha says. Before the pandemic he was paying between $2,000 (£1,600) and $5,000 for an animal. Now, it’s about $20,000. “For a couple of years during lockdown it was near impossible to get them,” he says.

He is not alone. Almost two-thirds of researchers struggled to find monkeys in 2021, according to a report from the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, which found that the supply of monkeys for research is at crisis point. According to an article in Science, the report is the “strongest government statement yet on the precarious state of monkey research”. A similar picture is coming from Europe, where a shortage of monkeys has resulted in some research being abandoned.

Long-tailed macaques (the monkey most commonly used in medical research) are protected under international trade law and special permits are required to import the animals into the US.

Laboratories need pathogen-free primates that are in good condition and so do not want monkeys that have been wild-caught. With prices so high, however, traffickers are incentivised to catch them in the wild and launder them in via established breeding colonies.

For decades, China was the largest supplier, but it banned the wild animal trade in 2020 in light of the Covid pandemic. Demand for monkeys increased significantly in the following years, but supply did not. Cambodia has since significantly increased exports to plug the gap and tap into this increasingly lucrative market.

“The price is driving the desire of producers,” says Anne-Lise Chaber, an illegal wildlife trade researcher at the University of Adelaide, in Australia. Chaber’s research, published earlier this year in the journal One Health, says individual monkeys are being sold for between $20,000 and $24,000. Globally, south-east Asia is a large international supplier of macaques, but their breeding and trade has been poorly regulated, which can lead to more wild aminals being caught than is sustainable.

“It’s unlikely Cambodia managed to increase their production in such a short timeframe, so we need to understand how they made it happen,” says Chaber.

In the past 30 years, the wild population of long-tailed macaques has fallen by 40%. Photograph: Luke Massey/naturepl.com

The country’s export numbers tripled from 10,000 monkeys in 2018 to 30,000 in 2019 and 2020. Researchers write in the paper that Cambodia “has historically been incapable of producing second-generation offspring macaques, therefore increasing their production capacity legally seems unlikely”.

In November 2022, Cambodia was hit by a smuggling scandal: eight people were charged with illegally importing wild-caught monkeys into the US, falsely labelled as captive-bred. The macaques were taken from national parks and other protected areas in Cambodia to breeding facilities, where they were provided with false export permits, officials alleged. More than 14,000 wild macaques were trapped in this way, the US Justice Department says.

In the past 30 years, the wild population of long-tailed macaques has fallen by 40%, with a further 50% decline predicted over the coming three generations. One reason for the decline is over-utilisation for scientific purposes.

Macaques are a frequent sight in cities in south-east Asia, though researchers say this creates a misconception there is a large population of them.Photograph: Lauren DeCicca/Getty Images

Nadja Ramseyer Krog, director of the Long-Tailed Macaque Project, says there is a misconception that macaques are populous because so many of them now live in cities in south-east Asia: “

It’s not a very popular animal, in some areas. They do things like run into hotels, open the fridge and grab a Coca-Cola. If you go to a popular tourist destination you could maybe see 100 monkeys, but the forest behind it could be empty.”

Krog hopes in time we can stop using primates in research. “But of course we need to find alternatives,” she says. “I don’t think any scientists want to use wild-caught animals, or be part of extinguishing a wild animal.”

When monkeys can be taken from the wild or farmed, it increases contact between humans and wildlife, increasing the risk of pathogen transmission.

“Macaque breeders or sellers are housing thousands of animals in tiny crates in close proximity, creating the right conditions for the next pandemic: it is a pathogen bomb,” Chaber says. “The irony is that this production of macaques is mainly aimed at providing animals for biomedical research to create vaccines for current outbreaks.”

Animal rights campaigners want the US government to end the “cruel trade”, saying it poses a significant threat to public health. The National Academies report says investing in non-animal “organ on a chip” technology could reduce overall demand.

It also recommended that the US expand its domestic breeding facilities – which it can then regulate. Sacha says: “We shouldn’t be reliant on external countries for these animals that are really critical to our ability to test new therapeutics and vaccines and medicines.”

Editor says …Sterling Publishing & Media Service Agency is not responsible for the content of external site or from any reports, posts or links and thanks for following as always appreciate every like, reblog or retweet and comment thank you

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Australian News

BREAKING AUSTRALIA REPORT: Mystery crab migration off WA’s Shark Bay sparks call for more investment in marine research

Looking down at a reddish crab in someone's hands
A strong swimmer, the crab has been likened to Ian Thorpe.(Supplied: Pernille Meyer Sorensen)

AceBreakingNews – Conservationists have described the moment they encountered a mass gathering of crabs off the WA coast, which they believe could represent a new species.

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Ace Press News From Cutting Room Floor: Published: Nov.26: 2023” TELEGRAM Ace Daily News Link https://t.me/+PuI36tlDsM7GpOJe

Researchers came across the spectacular “carpet” of crabs during a boat trip from Denham to Dirk Hartog Island, around 800 kilometres north of Perth.

“It wasn’t hundreds, it wasn’t thousands, it was literally tens of thousands of them at the surface,” Leon Deschamps said.

“We actually slowed the boat down because we felt like we were making crab sushi.

“This thing was a little brownie-orange crab, which was making its way like Ian Thorpe.”

Mr Deschamps is the founder of the Shark Bay Shark Ark Project, which provides a free research vessel for marine science expeditions around Shark Bay.

The vessel was on its way to retrieve underwater dolphin research equipment last week, when the researchers came across the crabs.

Looking down at a reddish crab in someone's hands
A strong swimmer, the crab has been likened to Ian Thorpe.(Supplied: Pernille Meyer Sorensen)

I’ve been a professional fisherman and a keen recreational amateur fisherman all my life in the bay and our family has been up there almost 100 years, and none of us had ever seen anything like this,” he said.

“We took a little bit of footage to begin with but we stupidly didn’t take more because we were just so amazed and so caught up in the moment.”

Solving the mystery

Mr Deschamps said the crabs ranged in size from a 50-cent coin to the size of an orange.

He put a call out to scientists on social media to find out what they were and said he believed they could be a new subspecies of the four-lobed swimming crab (Thalamita sima).

WA Museum crustacean curator Andrew Hosie said based on the pictures and video they appeared to be Thalamita sima.

“It’s a small species of swimming crab that’s related to the blue swimmers and mud crabs,” Dr Hosie said.

Dr Andrew Hosie
Dr Andrew Hosie said the crabs were likely swimming away from Shark Bay’s salty water to breed.(Supplied: WA Museum)

Dr Hosie said the species could be found in shallow waters as far south as Perth and further north into Indonesia and even southern Japan.

However, he said a mass migration of the crabs had not been documented before, and he believed they were swimming out of the bay to less salty water to breed.

“They’ll breed, release the larvae from the eggs once they hatch, and that will get picked up by the Leeuwin Current and then they’ll get spread further south for dispersal,” he said.

“They don’t do this migration around Perth, or somebody should have seen it by now.”

Dr Hosie said it was plausible that the Shark Bay crabs could be a separate “cryptic species”, where similar looking animals were genetically distinct from each other.

“There’s a good chance that within what we’re calling Thalamita sima, multiple species do exist. It’s just nobody’s done a full study,” he said.

“With Western Australia in particular being so large and unpopulated, these sorts of interesting, natural phenomena, which we think is like, ‘Oh, that’s a one-off occurrence’, is just something that no-one’s around observing frequently enough to take note of.”

A drone shot over Shark Bay in Western Australia
The Shark Bay World Heritage Area is home to an array of marine life.(Instagram: @theverticalpixel)

A ‘place of incredible diversity’

Dolphin researcher Simon Allen, who also saw the crabs, said formalising the discovery of new species could be challenging.

“Quite often there are differing views even among the scientific community about what constitutes a species,” Dr Allen said.

“It’s only once you’ve got a certain amount of data or a certain type of data that you can actually officially say, ‘Whoa, this is a new species.'”

“[Shark Bay] is very vulnerable to the impacts of climate breakdown but a new species is a nice thing to get some focus on the area and encourage investigative eyes and inquisitive eyes to be looking at the area more closely.”

A man in beanie and hoodie smiles, while another person dives into the water, with only their flippers/fins visible
Leon Deschamps says more scientific data is needed on Shark Bay’s marine life.(Supplied: Pernille Meyer Sorensen)

Leon Deschamps said he would like to see more funding and research being done in the 23,000-square-kilometre world-heritage area.

“[Shark Bay] is a place of incredible diversity and really, because of its isolation, we just have a massive deficit in baseline data,” he said.

“We just really want some help to see these areas have better science done so that we can better protect them for future generations.”

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Looking down at a reddish crab in someone's hands
A strong swimmer, the crab has been likened to Ian Thorpe.(Supplied: Pernille Meyer Sorensen)
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Australian News

AUSTRALIA NATURE PHOTOGRAPHY REPORT: Kangaroo’s air guitar pose wins funniest wildlife photo of the year 😁🦘😁🦘

A kangaroo that looks like its playing an air guitar in a green field
A female western grey kangaroo striking a pose in the outer suburbs of Perth.(Jason Moore: Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards 2023)none

AceNewsDesk – Are you ready to laugh?

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Ace Press News From Cutting Room Floor: Published: Nov.23: 2023: ABC Photograph News: TELEGRAM Ace Daily News Link https://t.me/+PuI36tlDsM7GpOJe

A kangaroo rocks it out in a field of wildflowers, clearly in the zone by the look on her face — it’s the height of comedy.

Or at least that’s what the judges of the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards thought, bestowing their top 2023 prize to photographer Jason Moore for his aptly named photo, “Air Guitar Roo”. 

Up against 5,300 entries from 85 countries, Moore’s prize is a safari tour in the Masai Mara, Kenya, where the potential for more animals in hilarious situations awaits. 

Overall winner

Here’s his winning image alongside other category winners. 

Air Guitar Roo

A kangaroo that looks like its playing an air guitar in a green field
A female western grey kangaroo striking a pose in the outer suburbs of Perth.(Jason Moore: Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards 2023)none

Commenting on the day back in August 2021, Moore said he was attacked by ticks when trying to get the “perfect” image.

“When I saw this roo striking their air guitar pose, it immediately brought a smile to my face, and I knew that I had captured something really special,” he said.

Creatures of the Air winner

According to the judging panel, the image encapsulated a “happy vibe and feel good factor” — the sole purpose of what comedy wildlife is all about.

Creatures Under the Water winner

A bird falling off a branch into a lake
A striated heron has an unexpected plunge in the Zimanga Private Game Reserve, South Africa.(Vittorio Ricci: Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards 2023)none

Junior and People’s Choice winner

An avian family dispute in the Bialowieza Forest, Poland.(Jacek Stankiewicz: Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards 2023)none

Amazing Internet Portfolio winner

Scroll through to see the squirrel’s landing.A ground squirrel jumped as if he could fly, to his surprise, he fell back down.

(Timea Ambrus: Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards 2023)none

A ground squirrel jumped as if he could fly, to his surprise, he fell back down.(Timea Ambrus: Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards 2023)none

Highly Commended winners

Here are a few of the highly commended images to have a giggle at.Excuse me sir, but I think you’re a little too young to be smoking

(Dakota Vaccaro: Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards 2023)none

A white grouse looking like a snowball with eyes.(Jacques Poulard: Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards 2023)none
Monday Blahs great gray owl slumped against a tree with a look of, “Is Monday over yet?”(John Blumenkamp: Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards 2023)none
A joey decides to get silly and try his hand at boxing.(Lara Mathews: Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards 2023)none

Editor says …Sterling Publishing & Media Service Agency is not responsible for the content of external site or from any reports, posts or links and thanks for following as always appreciate every like, reblog or retweet and comment thank you

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A kangaroo that looks like its playing an air guitar in a green field
A female western grey kangaroo striking a pose in the outer suburbs of Perth.(Jason Moore: Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards 2023)none
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Ace Breaking News

BREAKING U.K BLAKENEY NATIONAL NATURE RESORT REPORT: Norfolk nature reserve welcomes first seal pups of season

Seal pup at Blakeney
The first seal pup at Blakeney was discovered in 1988

AceBreakingNews – A nature reserve that is home to the largest grey seal colony in England has welcomed its first pups of the season.

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Ace Press News From Cutting Room Floor: Published: Nov.18: 2023: BBC England News: TELEGRAM Ace Daily News Link https://t.me/+PuI36tlDsM7GpOJe

Seal pup at Blakeney
The first seal pup at Blakeney was discovered in 1988

Blakeney National Nature Reserve, on the north Norfolk coast, is expecting about 4,500 pups to be born before early January.

National Trust ranger Duncan Halpin said the reserve would soon be “carpeted in grey seals”. 

The first pup at the reserve was spotted in 1988, but by 2001 there were only 25 births.

The reserve now works all year round to make sure the seals are monitored with low levels of disturbance.

The reserve put the success of the colony down to low disturbance levels, an “abundance” of fish for the seals to eat and a lack of natural predators

The reserve puts the success of the colony down to it being left undisturbed, an “abundance” of fish for the seals to feed on and a lack of natural predators.

A four-mile (6.5km) shingle spit prevents the seals from being disturbed and volunteers and rangers carried out a beach clean at the start of the season to remove any plastic waste.

Volunteers will use a remote camera to view a continuous live stream of the seal pups to minimise disturbance.

Volunteers and rangers carried out a beach clean before the start of the breeding season

The colony will be also be measured this year using aerial photographs by the University of St Andrews’ Sea Mammal Research Unit (SMRU). 

Mr Halpin said: “The grey seal colony is in the early stages of becoming established for this year and we are looking forward to following the progress of the colony, and its new pups, this winter.”

“It’s a breath-taking sight and is testimony to the potential of our marine life to thrive when the right conditions, and protection from disturbance, are in place.”

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Seal pup at Blakeney
The first seal pup at Blakeney was discovered in 1988
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Categories
Australian News

BREAKING AUSTRALIA REPORT: Rare video shows endangered southern cassowary emerging from ocean swim in Far North Queensland

A cassowary in the water as waves wash up on shore
The cassowary finds its way to shore and, soon after, its more natural habitat in the rainforest.(Supplied: Nikita McDowell)

AceBreakingNews – From a distance, it almost looked like a stereotypical image of the Loch Ness monster.

Ace Press News From Cutting Room Floor: Published: Nov.13: 2023: ABC Nature & Environment News: TELEGRAM Ace Daily News Link https://t.me/+PuI36tlDsM7GpOJe

But the creature Mandubarra traditional owner Nikita McDowell captured swimming towards her in the tropical waters of the Coral Sea was actually an endangered southern cassowary. 

A cassowary in the water as waves wash up on shore
The cassowary finds its way to shore and, soon after, its more natural habitat in the rainforest.(Supplied: Nikita McDowell)

“It just floated to shore until it reached the level where its feet could touch the ground,” Ms McDowell said of the encounter at Bingil Bay, south of Cairns.

“[You] can see in the video it was getting knocked around quite a bit by the waves.”

Ms McDowell said the cassowary headed toward the rainforest, where it “regurgitated a lot of salt water” until wildlife carers arrived.

“I knew it was exhausted. I knew it wasn’t going to have the energy to attack me or anything,” she said.

“I think it was mainly in shock.”

Physiology of a swimmer

Graham Lauridsen, a veterinarian and cassowary expert from Tully, said while cassowaries were “not super athletes” they were, nonetheless, competent swimmers, especially when threatened by an animal such as a dog.

“Like most birds, they actually have air sacs in their bodies, in their abdomen, which makes them quite buoyant,” Dr Lauridsen said.

A cassowary in the water as waves wash up on shore
The cassowary finds its way to shore and, soon after, its more natural habitat in the rainforest.(Supplied: Nikita McDowell)

“ They just paddle away just like any other bird does. They don’t go very far but they swim quite well.

“We do see them swimming across the mouths of some of the major rivers of North Queensland from time to time.”

The cassowary captured in Ms McDowell’s video was not injured.

“It would’ve been just like you or I after you’ve swum a fair way — just a bit puffy and panty until it got its breath back and moved on,” Dr Lauridsen said.

Dogs a major threat

The unusual sight of a large flightless bird metres off the coast has highlighted the importance of protecting cassowaries from dog attacks.

“We’ve actually got one in the rehab centre now down at Mission Beach for exactly that reason,” Dr Lauridsen said.

There are believed to be about 4,000 cassowaries left in Queensland, according to the Department of Environment and Science.

Officially listed as endangered, the southern cassowary’s greatest threats are habitat loss, traffic and domestic dog attacks.

“If you have dogs, they should be secured, they should be behind a fence and if you’re walking them, they should be on a lead – to protect the cassowary but also to protect the dogs,” Dr Lauridsen said.

Ms McDowell said traditional owners knew cassowaries would hunt for crabs and other food on the shoreline “but never that far out in the water”.

“I am just so happy it’s moved on and safe and healthy,” she said.

A cassowary in the water as waves wash up on shore
The cassowary finds its way to shore and, soon after, its more natural habitat in the rainforest.(Supplied: Nikita McDowell)

Editor says …Sterling Publishing & Media Service Agency is not responsible for the content of external site or from any reports, posts or links and thanks for following as always appreciate every like, reblog or retweet and comment thank you

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