back to Barbary macaques main page

On 26th March 2007 The Gibraltar Chronicle carried an article, by journalist Brian Reyes, on the Barbary macaques (referred to as is common practice as "apes", although they are in fact monkeys) .

Here we reproduce the unedited text, together with our own photographs.

                                                                                                                  Photo: Eric Shaw 

In the patio of a luxury home above Gardiner’s Road recently, Dr Eric Shaw was engaged in delicate diplomacy on behalf of Gibraltar’s apes.

The house owner was angry that a group of Barbary Macaques had trashed his yard, marking whitewashed walls with grubby hands and fouling his swimming pool.

The man vowed to kill the apes the next time they appeared on his property, a threat made only half in jest. Dr Shaw, who is known for not mincing his words, took a deep breath and ran through less radical ways of dissuading the troublesome apes.

“But you have to remember they’re wild animals,” he told the house owner. “They roam, that’s what they do, and your house happens to be in their path.”

This was a common encounter for Dr Shaw and his two-man team, who are responsible for looking after the apes under the terms of a contract between the Gibraltar Ornithological and Natural History Society and the Gibraltar Government.

The ape management team has come under relentless flak over recent months, but the criticism is unfair and largely unfounded.

People complain about apes on their property (although commonly known as such, they are in fact monkeys). They feel intimidated by these animals, which are destructive and can be aggressive. The apes seem to come in search of food. They rummage through bins, snatch bags from hands. Occasionally, there are reports of bites.

Residents of the Upper Town and Catalan Bay say the problem has never been as bad as in recent months. Some of them, based on little more than speculation, conclude the root cause must be down to Dr Shaw and his boys. Obviously, the theory goes, the apes are not being fed enough. That’s why they go looking for food.

In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.

On any morning at around 7am, whatever the weather, Dale Laguea and Damian Holmes, Dr Shaw’s ape management team, can be found in a badly-lit room tucked away out of sight behind Jew’s Gate.

Deftly wielding sharp knives, they slice and dice their way through 125 kilos of fruit and vegetables every day, roughly half a kilo per ape. There are apples, cabbages, potatoes and onions, a mix that varies with the season. There are barley grains too, and peanuts still in their shells. Bananas, it seems, are not the apes’ favourite. They prefer carrots, onions. Staff at the local market vouched that not a penny was spared on this giant salad, and that only top quality produce would satisfy Dr Shaw.

“If it’s not good enough for us, it’s not good enough for them,” Mr Laguea said, snapping a bite off a carrot to prove his point.

In the face of the public outcry, the Gibraltar Government carried out its own investigation to establish whether the apes were being properly fed and cared for. Environment minister Jaime Netto, who is ultimately responsible for the apes, said he had no concerns about their care.

“Assumptions have been made about the quality and the quantity of the food that is provided to the apes,” he told the Chronicle. “We have verified, independently, the amount and the quality of the food and we are satisfied that they are both correct.”

“We’ve done it without them [the ape management team] knowing that we were going to go and spot check them on certain days and certain hours.”

“We are satisfied…the apes are given the right amount of the right type of food, and the quality is very good.”

FEEDING AND ROAMING

So if it isn’t hunger, what is making these apes roam into town and approach humans for food? The answer is complex and multi-layered.

Underlying it all is a massive boom in the ape population. Last year, ape numbers hit an all time high at around 240. As young males break away to form their own packs, they inevitably move into new areas of the Rock.

Established packs also have their own roaming territories. There is a popular misconception that there are ‘wild’ packs and ‘not so wild’ packs. This is simply not true. All these animals are wild. They may be fed in the mornings, their feeding points scrubbed and freshly-watered daily, but these apes will also respond to natural impulses to roam and forage. Studies by a US academic established that the apes spend up to a third of their time roaming. The same studies established that the apes forage for 39 species of Gibraltar plants. They wander to the boundaries of their patches in search of berries, insects, or whatever else they might find. It is as much about curiosity and exercise as it is about feeding. This, as Dr Shaw has repeatedly pointed out to dozens of angry locals, is what apes do.

Coupled to all of this is the influence of humans on the behavioural patterns of the Barbary Macaques. The apes are a key element of Gibraltar’s tourism industry but the product is sold in a way that encourages up-close contact between visitors and animals. Posing next to the apes has become an obligatory part of any day-trip to Gibraltar. A visit to YouTube, the internet website where people can post their home movies, illustrates the point: type Gibraltar into the site’s search facility and the top responses are home videos of the apes, many including images of people feeding the animals.

Feeding the apes is illegal and punishable by a fine of up to £500. But there has been just one conviction since the first version of the law came into force in 1918. There are signs in the Upper Rock Nature Reserve warning against feeding. The authorities pay lip service to the fact that feeding is illegal and urge people to refrain. But the simple truth is that the law is not enforced. Apes have learned to associate humans with food. A walk through the Upper Rock on a busy day leaves little doubt that many tourists arrive on the Rock intent on getting close to the apes. Over the space of a week the Chronicle witnessed numerous instances of local tour guides encouraging them to do so.

There is a fundamental tension underlying the community’s relationship with the apes, perhaps Gibraltar’s most iconic attraction: they may be wild animals, but they also help generate massive tourism income. Visitors want and expect that first-hand experience. They don’t want to watch from a distance, as many environmentalists here would prefer. The tourism sector, understandably perhaps, tends to give the tourists what they want.

Officials repeatedly stress that this is not about tourism versus environment. But they add that a better balance must be found between the two.

Mr Netto said improvements can and must be made to the ape management programme. But he also believes the tourism sector must change its approach, particularly in respect of feeding.

“It’s not a question of just saying ‘stop doing it or we’ll hit you with a stick over the head’,” he said. “It’s a question of changing the attitudes and the behaviour of those working in the tourism sector.”

“The fact is that the apes are wild animals, and that presupposes that people’s reaction and behaviour toward them ought to change.”

“It goes back to the question of more education in relation to how tourists are taken to the Upper Rock and how tourists relate to the apes there.” 

“And unfortunately, if they don’t over a period of time change, then obviously we’ll have to enforce the legislation that is in place.”

CULLING

In the front room of an old colonial house in the Upper Rock, referred to by the ape management team as ‘The Farm’, Mr Holmes is tapping data into a computer and reading the results out loud.

Dr Shaw is firing questions back at him as he continues to delve further into the computer’s hard drive, on which are stored the personal histories of all Gibraltar’s apes. This is the most extensive database on free-ranging macaques in the world. It is the product of years of research and first-hand information gathering, both by Dr Shaw and his team and by visiting academics from universities in Europe and North America. Everything from individual blood types to family histories can be found on this computer. It is a rich, invaluable resource, and a fundamental tool in the ape team’s work.

As they work, in a cage on The Farm’s verandah overlooking the Bay of Gibraltar lies Artist, a young male ape that was caught earlier in the morning. He is in a semi-conscious stupor, having been darted with an anaesthetic.

This part of the ape management job takes place out of sight. At least once a week, animals are caught and brought to The Farm, where they are measured and weighed. Mark Pizarro, a local veterinarian, works closely with the GONHS team and gives the apes a medical check up. Blood samples are taken, eyes and ears are inspected, teeth are scrutinised, fur is combed for lice.

In most cases the apes are returned to where they were picked up and released with little fuss. They are perhaps slightly dazed, but that is all. Occasionally though, the conclusion to the exercise is far more austere.

The Gibraltar Government, after a careful evaluation based on thorough scientific research, has ordered a massive cull of Gibraltar’s ape population. It has been quietly carried out, on and off, for months now. The programme is currently on hold but, as of last week, 33 apes had been put to sleep. The current licence allows for a further 40 apes in total to be culled.

Choosing which apes to cull is a laborious, emotional process for Dr Shaw and his team. They know these animals by name, are familiar with their individual characters, their quirks. They have become close to them and it is a painful predicament to have to select which ones are going to die.

The choice is down to an evaluation of what an ape’s death will mean to those left behind. It is about minimising the impact on the structure and coherence of a pack, ensuring that a family unit is not irrevocably destabilised. It can take days to select a candidate for culling. And whatever the underlying science behind the decision, there is no masking the fact that it is an unpleasant, unsavoury task.

In the high-ceilinged, airy boardroom of the Ministry for the Environment, Mr Netto tries to conceal his emotions as he talks about the cull, but he is clearly upset by the whole thing.

“Culling is a very regrettable step, not to be taken lightly,” he told the Chronicle. “We are talking about sentient beings. These apes have sensations and feelings.” “On the other hand, it’s obvious that we have a problem in terms of the number [of apes] in relation to the habitat that is available for them.”

Mr Netto and his officials know that culling alone will not solve the problems. Once the numbers are down to 180 or so – the figure set out in the original contract with GONHS – the focus will be on managing population growth.

A birth control programme is already in place, though its impact is limited. There are currently anywhere between 27 and 32 ape births every year. If an ongoing cull is to be avoided – and those involved at all levels of the ape management program are doing everything possible to avoid unnecessary deaths – then other initiatives are needed.

GONHS is currently engaged in detailed talks with the government of Tunisia to begin re-introducing Barbary Macaques in the mountains that North African country. The apes were once indigenous there but numbers have dwindled. Government officials are hopeful that the project will come to fruition, but complex bureaucracy means it is moving slower than was originally hoped for.

SCIENTIFIC OPTIMISM

Despite the challenges of managing Gibraltar’s ape population, there is huge reason for optimism. Behind the scenes, exciting developments are taking place that could – perhaps even should – prompt a radical review of Gibraltar’s relationship with its Barbary Macaques.

In simple terms, Gibraltar has become a leading research centre for primatologists, not just in Europe but at a global level.

Leading scientists from all over the world come here to carry out long term research projects into every aspect of the Barbary Macaques’ world, from behaviour to health. By studying the apes, they are gleaning knowledge that can help in many fields of science, from anthropology to medicine.

As the hub of the ape management programme in Gibraltar, Dr Shaw and his team play a vital role as facilitators to these visiting academics.

In January GONHS signed a groundbreaking collaboration agreement with the University of Vienna, under which teams from Austria will come to Gibraltar to conduct a wide-ranging programme of macaque research.

The initiative envisages work in a number of scientific disciplines and will be coordinated by a board made up of academics and researchers from Vienna and Gibraltar.

All scientific papers subsequently published in peer-reviewed journals will refer to this collaboration.

The Austrian university intends to bring cutting-edge scientific equipment to Gibraltar for use in the studies.

“The Barbary Macaques are unique in that they show behavioural, biological and ecological characteristics like no other kind of ape,” said Professor John Dittami, from the university’s department for neuro biology and behavioural science.

This is an important coup for the Rock, one that will further establish Gibraltar’s credentials as a world-class centre for primatology.

This world of science is far removed from the reality of the Upper Rock tourism product. It is also of little solace to the disgruntled residents of Gardiner’s Road and other areas that have to put up with the apes.

But it is a world that officials here believe is worth nurturing and building on. The challenge for them in the coming months will be finding ways to bridge the gap between the two realities.