Sri Lanka has thrown out ideas to export 100,000 toque macaque monkeys which are exposed to danger to China, the Wildlife and Nature Protection Society of Sri Lanka, one of the 30 petitioners who went to court against the proposal, said on Monday. The region going through its worst economic destruction in more than seven decades, was giving consideration to a plan by a Chinese private company to capture and export wild toque macaques to zoos in China. Conservation organisations had alerted that the monkeys could be sent to labs rather than zoos, and had come to the nation’s Court of Appeal looking for any conclusion to send them to China is quashed.
When the matter was taken up on Monday, the Attorney-General said the Department of Wildlife and Conservation had claimed that “they will not be proceeding to send monkeys to China”, WNPS said in a statement. “The matter of case will be taken seriously before the Court of Appeal on 6th July to record the above undertaking given to the court by the state,” the WNPS said. Toque macaques, discovered just in Sri Lanka, are among species identified as being in danger of extinction by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.