11 september 2011
Fieldwork in Parc National d'Ifrane
Tomorrow Manon, Kris and Tomos (volunteers and research assistants) and myself will be off to Morocco to spend a month in the field conducting research on the wild Barbary macaque population in the Ifrane National Park. We will collect data on the density of the macaques, the numbers of livestock and also on the degradation and regeneration of the forest area. It will be great to be back in the field. This survey is sponsored by the Dutch Zoo Conservation Fund and is in cooperation with Institut Scientifique in Rabat.
Local team stops poaching of a young macaque!
The fossil sellers, as we call our local friends of MPC in the Ifrane National Park have yet again stopped the poaching of a young macaque last week. August is the peak of the poaching season. Sandra Molesti, a PhD student from the University of Lincoln said:
" I was at the tourist site today to work on my experiment when I heard the monkeys alarm calling and screaming. I ran there and there were two people trying to catch a baby with food and their hands (so not really professional). They have been chased away by the fossil sellers and the people who rent out horses. Apparently they are known and it was not the first time they tried on this group. People told me that they are poor people who catch a monkey on command for usually foreign buyers (e.g. French people etc). Thus apparently they are some demands now so certainly some people are trying to catch infants".
Although this is disturbing news, MPC is extremely happy to see that our local friends are working hard to fight the poachers!
" I was at the tourist site today to work on my experiment when I heard the monkeys alarm calling and screaming. I ran there and there were two people trying to catch a baby with food and their hands (so not really professional). They have been chased away by the fossil sellers and the people who rent out horses. Apparently they are known and it was not the first time they tried on this group. People told me that they are poor people who catch a monkey on command for usually foreign buyers (e.g. French people etc). Thus apparently they are some demands now so certainly some people are trying to catch infants".
Although this is disturbing news, MPC is extremely happy to see that our local friends are working hard to fight the poachers!
