The illegal trade in primates is growing in the world, especially in China. This has been revealed by the deputy director of the Jane Goodall Institute, Laia Dotras; the director of the Darwin Center , Montserrat Ubach; the director of the Fundacio MONA , Olga Feliu, and the technical director of the Rainfer sanctuary in Madrid, Marta Bustelo, during a meeting at the Museum of Natural Sciences in Barcelona.
Dotras denounced the “great problem of the international traffic of primates”, a “millionaire business” that causes that in China today “a chimpanzee can be sold on the black market for 70,000 euros“Or, as Feliu pointed out, that in the Asian country ” gorillas are bought for 400,000 euros “.
These animals travel illegally in small boxes and only “one in ten arrives alive , often with false papers and drugged”, ” Dotras explained. The rise of this traffic in China is due to the fact that primates are considered “a prestige good” , which has caused them to be acquired for zoos, as pets or for shows as a show of economic power without being aware of their value. the consequences on their health, “as was the case here in the 1990s.
Dotras asked not to blame the local communities that “only try to live in a dignified way” and stressed that a local hunter only earns “about 15 euros per chimpanzee”, for which he pointed to “the main culprits, which are the international mafias “.
Problems in their physical and mental health
The experts warned of the problems caused by the use of primates in circus shows, on television or their possession as pets in their physical or mental health, since, as Bustelo pointed out, they are trained based on of violent punishments to carry out activities that are not part of their nature.
Bustelo highlighted the work carried out by primate centers like Rainfer, which try to rehabilitateto primates through their socialization with individuals of the same species and to those who apply treatments for chronic diseases caused by their time in shows.
Even so, these animals are no longer reintroduced to their habitat due to the serious consequences they suffer, as illustrated by the case of Tarzan, a chimpanzee who “did not dare to go outdoors until nine years after arriving at Rainfer; he had agoraphobia due to having always lived in closed spaces in a circus”.
Spanish legislation
Ubach requested measures to prevent illegal trafficking and indicated that Spanish legislation only allows primate transactions between institutions and not between individuals.
However, Ubach recalled that “the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites) legalizes that a primate is your property when it is born under your tutelage , even if its parents have been acquired illegally.” For this reason, I defended a non-law proposal approved by all the groups in Congress in July 2017 that explicitly prohibits “the private ownership of primates and only allows it to zoos and rescue centers.”
All the participants in the debate asked the Administration to support the rescue centers and Bustelo demanded that “the million euros that the State collects in seizures of animal trafficking every year be allocated to rescue centers, so there would be no need to move money from other budget items.
They are not pets
The different experts highlighted the need for awareness to understand that primates cannot be kept as pets because they are wild animals .
For example, Bustelo pointed out that the smile that primates put on in television commercials and movies, which we associate with the human emotion of happiness and we have normalized because “we associate monkeys as funny animals”,“a sign of fear” .
“People believe that a primate is like a dog and wants to be touched and snuggled when it is not, there is a tremendous lack of information,” lamented Bustelo, who reproached that “people are informed when they already have a primate as a pet and not before.”
