Berberblog -Moroccan Primate Conservation Foundation (MPC)

While I was in Morocco I learned that the local authorities of Azrou did a raid at the house of the biggest catcher/ poacher of macaques last month. This is very good news because I have been pushing for this for years now. Unfortunately the word probably reached the catcher and they found nothing, but the fact that this finally happened is fantastic and I am sure that this man will feel the pressure now and knows that the authorities are on his back. Well done!!

Also I heard that this year the catchers have started killing females whilst catching the infants. Until now I could never confirm this and most infants are being captured without any harm to the females. I am very worried about this news and wonder what brings this change in methods. Maybe the females are becoming more protective as a result of the heavy poaching.

When we did the training for the students of Mohammed V University in Rabat in April, we gave boxes of flyers to the National Park authorities to have them handed out to tourists in the park. I was in the forest last week and the fossil sellers, my friends and informants told me that they had spent the whole summer handing out flyers to passing tousrists. I am really happy with this and it seems like the national park staff has considerably changed their attitude towards macaque conservation since we had the workshop there last year november.

A group of organisations from Spain and Holland and colleagues working in the Rif have joined hands and are now working together on conservation and tackling the illegal trade in Barbary macaques. The group is called: Grupo de Trabajo para la Conservacion del Macaco de Berberia.

Last but not least, some sad news. A colleague scientists Nelly Menard has spent the last years doing a big survey in the Middle Atlas on the status of the Barbary macaque. Her results were presented recently and they confirm what Andrea Camperio Ciani and I have been claiming for years: the Barbary macaque population in the Middle Atlas is in danger of becoming extinct in 10 years time. Some areas have only 7 individuals per km2 left and there are not more than 3000 macaques left in the forest. It's time to stop focusing on research and take action if we want to preserve this species.

I am back from the training we gave to the Moroccan NGOs and customs. I have very mixed feelings about it, but let me start by complimenting WWF MedPo, SSN and Charles Mackay from Heathrow airport for the really great week! It has not been easy to arrange this and I think it went very well.
The NGO attendees were a really inspiring group of people and it is great to know that there are people like this in Morocco fighting for the nature of their country. It also however has become very clear that they do not have a lot of support and cooperation with the governments and that Morocco is far from being a democratic country in which things can be said out loud in press or in person. This personally irritated me as I believe that when at least the cards are on the tabel progress is possible. Anyway, I will not go into too much detail and i am glad that some NGO representatives had the chance to sit at one table with a government official. I hope MPC can work together with the Moroccan NGOs from this point onwards.

The customs training was next. There were customs officers from all over the country, and that was good, although I would have like to have seen more officers from the hotspots Tanger and Ceuta. This was the first time since Morocco signed the CITES treaty in 1976 that a CITES training took place. I think many officers never had even seen a CITES permit in their life and maybe even heard about the treaty. Also, this was the first time ever that the Ministry of Forestry and Water/ CITES authorities and the Customs were in one room together talking about issues that overlap their work field!! We closed the gap with this training, but it shows how incredibly far behind Morocco is when it comes to CITES implementation and enforcement! But let's keep it positive, this was a start and I think good things will come from it. The customs officers were enthousiastic and what I really appreciaited was the fact that they admitted the fact that there is an illegal trade in Barbary macaques to Europe, that it is a big problem (as opposed to some colleagues in Morocco....) and some even claim that my estimation of 300 infants being smuggled out of Morocco annually is an underestimation. They claim that it is probably 400 to 500 macaques.

My demonstration on how to handle Barbary macaques when confiscated was a big success and people were very amused to see me struggle with a stuffed monkey on the floor. They found the information very interesting. WWF/ SSN and AAP donated a transport cage, a catching bag and handling gloves to the customs.

I just came back from travelling through India for a month and it is taking me quite a lot of time to adjust to being back in Europe. India has made a very big impression on me, not only because of the very cheecky monkeys that live there, but the people, the scenery and spirituality of the country. In some ways India reminded me of Morocco a lot, but in other ways I realised that Morocco is much more developed over the last years.

I am off to Morocco tomorrow where i will be part of a training that the Moroccan authorities, SSN and WWF MedPo have organised. The first days will be for the Moroccan NGOs and how they can contribute to putting a halt to the illegal trade. The last 3 days will be for the Moroccan customs officers. We will train them on Moroccan legislation and CITES, on Barbary macaque biology and the illegal trade and how to handle moneys, what to do with them when they confiscate a monkey etc. I am very excited about this week. It is the first time this will ever take place in Morocco and I hope it all goes well. I am sure it's going to be a challenge as well.
So tomorrow I set off with a large catching net donated by AAP (thank you!!) and a stuffed animal (monkey style...) to do a demonstration....I will make sure to get some pictures so you can all have a laugh. I am looking forward to being in Morocco again, to get new ideas and new plans and hopefully to achieve a lot as well with my colleagues from Morocco, America and Italy!

Oh, by the way, I have been nominated for the Future for Nature award 2010 again, and fingers crossed this time, I might be amongst the 3 winners!!! But already the 2 nominations is an acknowledgement to my efforts and I am very happy about it!

A friend of mine just came back from Morocco only 2 weeks ago and was in Tanger where he found many infant Barbary macaques for sale. They were even offering them to drivers alomg the road between Ceuta and Tanger. I notified the authorities and hope they will do something about it soon.

The holiday season has started again and many Moroccan families living in Europe are on their way or have already arrived in Morocco for their annual trip to visit family and their home country.

Unfortunately this means that right at this very moment,many Barbary macaque infants born since May this year are being captured from the wild, mainly in the Middle Atlas region, to be transported to the markets in the cities and to be sold to tourists.
These macaques will be facing 30 hour drives in 40-50 degrees celsius heat, smuggled accross borders and often ending up either ill or dead on arrival. The ones that survive face an unnatural life in small homes of people in cities like Paris, and later dumped on the streets and when they are lucky they end up in one of the European sanctuaries.Some of them however are euthanised in France due to lack of shelter in the overstocked sanctuaries.

Sad to say, the first infant wild caught Barbary macaque of only 2 months old has already arrived on the premises of AAP, Sanctuary for exotic animals in Holland last week (5/8) and was bought by tourists thinking they did the right thing. This infant is now facing a life in captivity, when he was running around in the forest only 1 month ago. There are probably many more to follow.

MPC has had its first board meeting. The MPC board consists of the following persons:

Chairman: Rikkert Reijnen - currently working at IFAW Netherlands and in the past has worked for AAP, Sanctuary for exotic animals and has been involved in Barbary macaque conservation actions for years for AAP. Rikkert is, together with Els van Lavieren, one of the founders of MPC.

Secretary: Mariette Buthker- who has worked at AAP, Sanctuary for exotic animals for years in PR and Marketing

Treasurer: Hicham Zemmouri, who currently works for Shell in the finacial world and is originally Moroccan

Advisor: Prof. Hans de Iongh - reknown conservation biologist and currently working at CML in Leiden as Associate professor

Els van Lavieren: director

We have established our first goals and will be mainly focusing on the CITES uplisting of the Barbary macaque from Appendix II to Appendix I. This CoP will take place in Qatar in March 2010, and hopefully MPC will accomplish this uplisting together with other NGO's and the Moroccan and Algerian governments.

We are working on a new website, that will be located at: www.mpcfoundation.nl in the near future and also on this webiste you will be able to see how you can help MPC to combat the illegal trade on the Barbary macaque and conservation of their natural habitat.

There are many people in this world who dedicate their life to saving specific species or habitats. These are brave people. People in the field. People who make a difference. Who set aside their academic ambitions or combine the efforts to achieve their actual goal. And their dream.

Often these brave people work under very hard circumstances, earn very little money and give up a stability and safety, because they know, that it they don’t persist, probably nobody will care enough, so this is the price they pay.

These people, like many of my friends, are the people who make a difference. Who know the field, who know their subjects, who know the local situation, the status and the prospect. Little efforts have large impacts, and they can only be achieved by people who are actually IN the field doing the work.

Then why, I wonder, are exactly these people always struggling to get by? Very low incomes, uncertainty on future work, often no base to live etc. Are these people not doing 80% more effective work than NGO employees who travel around the world to ridiculously expensive workshops and conferences, flying business class only to TALK about conservation instead of taking ACTION?

The cost of one conference could probably provide one field worker with a 5-10 year salary. But in stead, the field worker is writing funding proposals to every fund they can find, just to make sure that they can continue their very important work, while others are sipping champagne at the opening ceremony of yet another conference in Barbardos!

It makes me angry. And disappointed, that the field worker seems to be a forgotten species, and many important conservation decisions (and funding decisions!) are made by conference lovers who have never set a foot in the field. Maybe we need a conservation programme for the field workers. Status Endangered!

Recently one of the larger global conservation NGO’s, of whom I will not mention the name, expressed an opinion that shocked me. I will not go into details, but literally they said that the Barbary macaque is in their eyes “not a priority species”.

WHAT?

Indeed, the fact that there are only around 3000 macaques left in the wild in Morocco, maybe 3500 in the world, and that the species is declining with a rate so fast that extinction is not so far away, the fact that they recently shifted the species to status “endangered” , the only primate in North Africa, the only primate North of the Sahara, the only macaque outside of Asia…..and there are LESS Barbary macaques than Sumatran orangutans left……..is not enough to call them a priority species??????

Maybe this NGO should organise a workshop in Morocco, not in luxury, but in the field, to see what the reality is. The money of their beneficiaries would be much better spent!

I have been informed that I am not one of the 3 award winners unfortunately. But I am sure there were better candidates and I will try next year again.
Honestly it would have given me the financial break that I have been longing for for a while now. It has become hard to keep myself involved in the Barbary macaque project when there is no funding available. But hopefully MPC will bring a change to that situation.
The plan is that MPC will be up and running in May this year. You should however know that in the meantime we are not sitting around doing nothing.

I will fly to Morocco at the beginning of April to participate again in a training organised by GEA and WWF MedPo for the students of the forestry school in Salé and for the Mohammed V university students. I will train them in the illegal trade issues. We will also take them into the field again, just like we did with the group in November.

Also, at the beginning of May, I will return to Morocco for SSN. SSN is working on the implementation of CITES in Morocco and, like we have done before with the Spanish customs, we will train the Moroccan customs as well.

Please keep coming back to this blog, I will update as much as I can and let you know when MPC is up and running!