'Shocking' mortality of infant macaques points to dangers of oil palm plantations

[Judi Lynn]

by Spoorthy Raman on 27 February 2024

As oil palm plantations encroach on rainforests, wild primates increasingly enter them to forage, where they face the threat of being eaten by feral dogs, killed for raiding crops, or caught by traffickers for the pet trade.

A new study from Peninsular Malaysia finds that exposure to oil plantations also significantly increases the risk of death among infant southern pig-tailed macaques.

In addition to known threats, researchers speculate common pesticides used in oil palm plantations might play a role in the increased death risks for infant macaques, but their study stops short of providing direct evidence implicating any specific toxic chemical in these deaths.

Conservationists call for using environmentally safe and wildlife-friendly agricultural practices in oil plantations to minimize risks and establishing wildlife corridors and tree islands so that endangered primates, like southern pig-tailed macaques, can move freely without being exposed to threats

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Between January 2014 and February 2023, the researchers noticed 52 of the 92 infants disappeared from the two groups of macaques they studied. Statistical analysis revealed that when infant macaques spent more than three hours each day in the plantations, they were three times more likely to die. The whopping 57% death rate, much higher than is common among wild primates, can jeopardize the already-endangered macaque’s future, they say.

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Researchers noticed that in 10 years, more than half of the baby pig-tailed macaques born in the group died before they turned a year old. Image by Sebastian Ow via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC 4.0).

More:
https://news.mongabay.com/2024/02/shocking-mortality-of-infant-macaques-points-to-dangers-of-oil-palm-plantations/