Sri Lanka wants to sell 100,000 monkeys to China because of money problems

The government of debt-ridden Sri Lanka is considering exporting 100,000 specimens of an endangered species of monkey to China.

Agriculture Minister Mahinda Amaraweera’s recently announced plan to bring wild Ceylon hat monkeys to China has drawn widespread criticism from animal rights activists. The price for the animals has not yet been announced.

According to the Chinese private company that wants to import the primates, it wants to purchase them for hundreds of Chinese zoos. However, the Chinese embassy in Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo, insists that the Chinese government has not received any applications for the importation of animals.

However, Sri Lanka’s Agriculture Minister Amaraweera said the export would be considered given the widespread damage the monkeys are doing to agriculture. For example, there is damage to coconut plantations, which generate a lot of money for the country when exported. Lately, however, monkeys have destroyed a significant portion of crops – partly because humans are increasingly encroaching on the animals’ habitat.

At the same time, the monkeys are on the Red List of endangered species of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). This is a status with no legal implications, an IUCN spokeswoman said when asked. A state may export the animals if, in the opinion of a state scientific authority, doing so is not detrimental to the survival of the species. The animals are not protected in Sri Lanka itself, they only occur in the wild there.

Animal rights activists in Sri Lanka now fear the 100,000 monkeys could be used for research or end up as food. For example, the Sri Lanka’s Wildlife and Nature Protection Society called on the government to stop exporting and instead find other solutions to limit the monkey population.

The island state south of India with a population of about 22 million is currently plagued by major financial concerns. The country ended up in the worst economic crisis in decades last year and since then has been struggling with food and energy shortages and food prices have risen sharply. Massive protests last summer led to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s flight abroad and his resignation. Sri Lanka recently received a four-year loan program from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for about $3 billion. But that is not enough to solve the crisis. (aeg/sda/dpa)