Live Capture and Ownership of Lemurs in Madagascar: Extent and Conservation Implications

Live capture and ownership of lemurs in Madagascar: extent and conservation implications K IM E. REUTER,HALEY G ILLES,ABIGAIL R. WILLS and B RENT J. SEWALL Abstract Overexploitation is a significant threat to biodi- or urban customers (Duarte-Quiroga & Estrada, ; versity, with live capture of millions of animals annually. Corlett, ). In many cases, living animals are caught as An improved understanding of live capture of primates is part of trade networks for bushmeat and body parts, some- needed, especially for Madagascar’s threatened lemurs. times involving professional hunters, transporters and mar- Our objectives were to provide the first quantitative esti- kets (Fa et al., ; Duarte-Quiroga & Estrada, ; mates of the prevalence, spatial extent, correlates and timing Corlett, ; Nekaris et al., ). This suggests that live of lemur ownership, procurement methods, within-country capture, like the bushmeat trade, may be widespread and movements, and numbers and duration of ownership. increasing. Using semi-structured interviews of , households and Live capture is causing increasing concern in Madagascar transporters, across study sites, we found that lemur (Schwitzer et al., ), where amphibians and reptiles are ownership was widespread and affected a variety of taxa. captured, sometimes to the point of near-extinction (e.g. We estimate that , lemurs have been affected since Grenoble, ), and transported internationally via orga- . Most lemurs were caught by owners and kept for nized trade networks (Andreone et al., ) for pet or either short (# week) or long ($ years) periods. The medical trades. In contrast, little is known about the live live capture of lemurs in Madagascar is not highly organized capture of the country’s native mammal species, % but may threaten several Endangered and Critically of which are endemic (IUCN, ). Most documented cap- Endangered species. tures of mammals in Madagascar are related to the bushmeat trade (Golden, ; Razafimanahaka et al., ), Keywords Africa, conservation, live capture, pet, primate, although the trade appears to be less organized than in wildlife trade other countries (Golden, ). However, recent political instability may have resulted in increased trading of bushmeat (Schwitzer et al., ) and facilitated an increase in live captures. Effective conservation of Madagascar’s mam- Introduction mals therefore requires a better understanding of the preva- verexploitation is a significant threat to biodiversity lence and breadth of the live capture of animals, including O(Baillie et al., ), with hunting and live capture re- frequency, temporal trends, associated factors, and the corded throughout the tropics (e.g. Fa et al., ; Corlett, extent to which movement of animals from the point of ). In tropical forests hunting is conducted on a small capture is facilitated by an established trade network. scale for subsistence, and as part of organized trade for dom- In particular, this information is needed for ’ estic and international markets (Corlett, ). The bush- Madagascar s endemic primates, the lemurs, which are meat trade may be increasing with the human population one of the most threatened groups of large vertebrates (Corlett, ) and as rural communities gain access to (Schwitzer et al., ). Similar to other mammals, studies urban markets (Fa et al., ; Duarte-Quiroga & Estrada, on lemur capture have focused on the bushmeat trade ; Corlett, ). However, despite advances in under- (e.g. Golden, ), which may be increasing following a ’ standing hunting, live capture of animals through informal coup d état in (Schwitzer et al., ). However, lemurs and formal routes remains poorly understood (Duarte- are easy to habituate (Eppley et al., ) and thus may be Quiroga & Estrada, ; Nekaris et al., ). attractive as pets. Furthermore, records of holding facilities Live capture may affect up to million birds, , for captive lemurs indicate that ownership of lemurs has reptiles and , primates annually and the animals are been ongoing and may be common (Welch, ; traded globally (Karesh et al., ), usually to more affluent Schwitzer et al., ). Although a small-scale study from the Union of the Comoros suggested that the pet trade is the primary anthropogenic threat to introduced mongoose KIM E. REUTER (Corresponding author), HALEY GILLES and BRENT J. SEWALL lemurs Eulemur mongoz (Clark, ), the extent of live cap- Temple University, Department of Biology, 1900 N. 12th St, Philadelphia, PA 19122, USA. E-mail [email protected] ture of lemurs has not been quantified. The capture and sale of lemurs is illegal both domesti- ABIGAIL R. WILLS Mpingo Conservation & Development Initiative, Kilwa Masoko, Tanzania cally (Petter, ; Mittermeier et al., ) and inter- Received March . Revision requested June . nationally (UN, ), with punishments including Accepted August . confiscation (Welch, ). Despite formal restrictions on © 2014 Fauna & Flora International, Oryx, Page 1 of 11 doi:10.1017/S003060531400074X http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 17 Mar 2015 IP address: 108.16.249.106 2 K. E. Reuter et al. the capture and sale of lemurs, anecdotal reports of The cities were located along a , km highway, and the lemur ownership across north-west (Andrews et al., ), villages were located around the perimeter of Ankarana north-east (Goodman, ; Hekkala et al., ), east National Park (, ha), which supports a high density (Welch, ; Birkinshaw et al., ), south-east of primates (Hawkins et al., ) and may be a key source (Rajaonson et al., ), south (Jolly et al., ), south-west of pet lemurs. (Zinner et al., ; Sauther et al., ) and central (Nievergelt et al., ) Madagascar suggest that lemur ownership may be common and that regulations limiting Methods lemur ownership are not enforced consistently. International standards of research ethics were followed and Details about lemur ownership in Madagascar are scant. research was approved by an ethics oversight committee Anecdotal reports indicate that lemurs are kept in villages (Temple University Institutional Review Board, Protocol near forested areas (Zinner et al., ; Birkinshaw et al., Number: ,May). All primary researchers ; Hekkala et al., ), potentially as a back-up source completed ethics training through the Collaborative of meat for food security (Zinner et al., ). They are also Institutional Training Initiative. Research was authorized kept by hotel owners (Goodman, ) to attract tourists by the Madagascar Ministry of Water and Forests, (Schwitzer et al., ). The concept of lemurs as pets has Madagascar National Parks, and locally elected officials. been documented in Malagasy culture (Andrews et al., ; Sauther et al., ). In general, however, it is not clear how captive lemurs are obtained, to what extent they Data collection are moved in-country, or what happens to them post- capture. Given their threatened status (Schwitzer et al., During June–August we visited households (n = ,) ), such information is needed to inform conservation in cities (. , inhabitants) and seven villages efforts (Mittermeier et al., ). (# , inhabitants) in northern and central Madagascar Our objectives were to () quantify the prevalence, spatial (Fig. ; Table ). In villages we sampled every fifth house- extent, correlates and timing of ownership, and () evaluate hold. In cities random sampling was stratified by adminis- methods of procurement, movement around the country, trative unit. To ensure independent sampling only one the numbers kept and the duration of ownership. Based person was interviewed per household. Respondents were on the literature we hypothesized that (a) many individuals head-of-household (self-identified as having major buying would have owned a lemur or had knowledge of lemur own- power for household goods) adults ($ years). If an eli- ership by others; (b) lemur ownership would be widespread gible individual refused to participate or if nobody was pres- geographically and across taxa; (c) the rate of lemur own- ent, sampling continued at the next household. Interviews ership would inversely correlate with human population were anonymous and no identifying information was col- density; and (d) reports of lemur ownership would span lected. Interviewees were reminded that questions could re- the past few decades. The data collected were used to esti- main unanswered, the interview could be terminated at any mate the recent impact of lemur ownership in urban areas point, and participation was voluntary. Verbal informed of Madagascar. consent was received and interviewees chose the place, For the second objective we hypothesized that (a) lemurs time and language (French or local Malagasy dialect) of would be procured by owners through direct capture, and (b) the interview. Interviews were conducted by a two-person long-distance relocation of lemurs by means of public trans- team comprising an international project leader trained in port would be low, perhaps because of the illegal nature of ethical data collection and a trained Malagasy translator. lemur ownership; and if lemur ownership was more prevalent Malagasy translators were always members of the predomi- in (often) poorer rural areas the cost of keeping a lemur would nant ethnic group of a study site, always fluent in the local result in (c) most owners keeping only one or two indivi- Malagasy dialect, and never known to the interviewee. duals. Finally, because reports indicated lemurs were kept as To investigate the in-country movement of captive le- a food resource or by hotel owners for display,

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