Monica Kotwani Channel NewsAsia 20 Oct 10;
SINGAPORE: National Parks Board (NParks) will be holding guided walks to educate people on how to behave when they see a monkey.
The walks are organised after anxious callers contacted NParks, following a recent case in Malaysia in which a monkey killed a baby.
The long-tailed monkey, known as the macaque, is also a popular species in Singapore forests.
NParks' Central Nature Reserve assistant director James Gan said: "What we are hoping (to achieve) through these kind of guided walks, (is) to have people better appreciate monkeys in their natural habitat and (for the public) to learn how to relate to these monkeys better, so that monkeys and human beings can co-exist peacefully".
NParks said people who feed wild monkeys alter the monkeys' relationship with the eco-system.
Such feeding lures the monkeys out of their natural habit to forage for food in the forests, onto residential areas such as those near the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve.
Ms Helene Mayne, a resident near Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, said residents do not mind the frequent visits by monkeys and are even protective of them.
"Monkeys do not generally seek out interaction with humans.
"And unfortunately, it's the people who come out and feed the monkeys (that cause) the macaques (to) seek that interaction.
"They're very family-orientated creatures. They're not naturally aggressive animals," she said.
-CNA/wk
Don't turn tail, get to know them instead
Guided walks to help residents, visitors cope with monkeys at Bukit Timah Nature Reserve
Ang Yiying Straits Times 21 Oct 10;
RESIDENTS living near the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, get to know your tree-climbing neighbours.
That is the aim of a series of guided walks which will be launched by the end of the year. Nearby residents and visitors to the nature reserve will be encouraged to better understand and to avoid conflicts with the macaques, Singapore's most common wild primate.
The walks are a collaboration between the National Parks Board (NParks) and the Jane Goodall Institute (Singapore), a non-profit organisation for wildlife research, education and conservation. Two trial walks have been conducted so far by primate researcher Michael Gumert, who is based at Nanyang Technological University.
Macaques made the headlines earlier this month when Malaysian media reported that a macaque - believed to be from either the long-tailed or pig-tailed species - took a newborn girl from her house in Seremban in Malaysia, bit her and dropped her to her death from a rooftop.
The guided walks are not a response to the incident but are the latest in a series of measures, including increasing fines and education outreach, that NParks has been implementing to send the message: Do not feed the monkeys.
More people have been caught doing so. As of September this year, 302 had been fined, double the 150 last year and 154 in 2008. This is due to continued flouting of the rules and increased enforcement. Offenders can be fined $500.
Feeding monkeys can alter their natural behaviour, said Mr James Gan, NParks' assistant director of the Central Nature Reserve. Instead of foraging in the forest where there are natural sources of food, the monkeys may start to regard humans as an easy means to get food.
Monkeys which get used to having food thrown from cars may hang around the roads near the reserves, becoming road-kill. Feeding the monkeys can also condition them to behave in certain ways viewed as aggressive by humans, such as snatching plastic bags which they think contain food.
Monkeys which display altered behaviour can be trapped and culled. Last year, the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) culled 127.
It said such monkeys are typically used to being fed, no longer afraid of humans and unable to fit in with other monkeys in their natural habitats.
Figures from the AVA show there were 611 reports last year related to nuisance caused by monkeys or of monkey sightings outside forested areas.
However, the macaques at Bukit Timah Nature Reserve have their fair share of supporters among nearby residents.
Human resource consultant Helene Mayne, 39, lives in Hindhede Drive, where monkeys have been seen roaming about. She said she loves the monkeys - and is able to recognise individual ones that frequent her street.
She said: 'I think they're wonderful. How many places in the world can you be with the monkeys at night and work in the city in the day? Singapore has got the best of both worlds.'
Don't feed the monkeys: A walkthrough guide
Monica Kotwani Today Online 21 Oct 10;
SINGAPORE - When monkeys turn aggressive, it is often people who are to blame, according to the National Parks Board (NParks). So, it plans to hold guided walks by the end of the year to educate people on what not to do when they see one.
NParks was responding to queries from the public following the fatal attack on a Malaysian baby by a macaque, a type of long-tailed monkey common in Singapore's forests.
NParks said members of the public who feed wild monkeys are not only causing them to turn aggressive but also altering their complex relationship with the eco-system.
Its assistant director (central nature reserve), Mr James Gan, said: "Through the walks, we hope to have people appreciate monkeys in their natural habitat and learn how to relate to them better."
He said monkeys lose their skills for gathering food when fed by humans, and the forest also requires the monkeys to disperse fruits and seeds so new trees can grow.
Feeding lures monkeys out of the forests, where they forage for food, and causes them to grab at anything they have been conditioned to recognise as food. This has increasingly been luring them into residential areas.
