The Hunt for Long-tailed Macaques

Villagers in the Cardamoms said earlier this month that the illegal practice of capturing wild long-tailed macaque monkeys is alive and well, despite a government ban. The practice was outlawed in 2010, after wild captures devastated Cambodian populations of the monkeys, but high demand by international biomedical research labs continues to drive a black market trade.

“I was down in one of the villages in the Cardamoms and some of the local guys there told me that there was an order,” said Jackson Frechette, flagship species manager for Fauna and Flora International (FFI). “Someone at one of the markets had ordered some long-tailed macaques to be captured live.”

Mr. Frechette’s team then saw evidence that local poachers were hunting the monkeys. “Along the river you can see it, every 500 meters or so there would be a strip of fallen trees,” Mr. Frechette said. He added that, while in the Cardamoms two weeks ago, he also saw several groups of poachers motoring along the Areng River after sunset searching the trees with a flashlight for the monkeys.

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