- Cambodian exports of long-tailed macaques will remain legal until November 2025, despite recommendations for suspension due to concerns over poaching and the misrepresentation of wild-caught monkeys as captive-bred.
- Cambodian officials strongly objected to the call for a trade suspension, disputing claims about unrealistic birth rates at breeding facilities and accusing the U.S. wildlife officials of misusing data obtained without their consent during investigations into alleged monkey laundering.
- Japan, China, Canada, the U.S. and other countries that import macaques for use in medical research rejected the suspension, arguing for further review; some expressed confidence in Cambodian compliance, while Canada acknowledged the importance of the trade to its research industry.
- Conservation groups expressed disappointment, highlighting the ongoing threats to wild macaque populations, including poaching, habitat loss and zoonotic risks, and warning that the decision enables unsustainable trade practices in the face of mounting evidence of misconduct.
Exports of long-tailed macaques from Cambodia will remain legal pending further review, despite recommendations for a suspension to prevent poaching of the critically endangered monkey from the wild.
The proposed suspension had been raised at last week’s meeting in Geneva of the Standing Committee of CITES, the global convention on the wildlife trade. It called on Cambodian authorities to provide more proof that wild-caught macaques (Macaca fascicularis) weren’t being sold as captive-bred animals, casting doubt on official data ostensibly showing that the country’s macaque exports were being supplied by breeding centers.
But delegates to the meeting on Feb. 4 agreed to grant Cambodian wildlife officials until November 2025 to host inspections from CITES, produce logbooks for captive-bred monkeys, and submit more data regarding the birth rates at monkey-breeding facilities.
Chheang Dany, deputy director of Cambodia’s Forestry Administration, said at the CITES meeting that Cambodia strongly objected to the recommendation that trade be suspended. He said “Cambodia already provided clarification” on data surrounding birth rates that CITES experts and conservationists had said were too high to be realistic.
Dany also said data surrounding long-tailed macaque birth rates provided to CITES without Cambodia’s consent.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had spent five years investigating alleged monkey laundering in Cambodia — the practice of wild-caught monkeys being passed off as captive-bred ones. During that time, it accrued a significant body of evidence, much of which came to light during the trial of Kry Masphal, a Cambodian wildlife official accused of monkey smuggling who was eventually acquitted in a U.S. court in 2024.
“Some of the information that was provided to the animal committee and standing committee by the representative of the U.S. … the data was not confirmed by Cambodia,” Dany said. “Nor did we agree for it to be used by the U.S. in court.”
Dany suggested the U.S. had taken Cambodian data from Masphal’s devices and argued it shouldn’t have been published.
According to Dany, Cambodia would welcome CITES and the U.S. to inspect breeding facilities and ensure they’re compliant with CITES regulations.
While the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service provided information to CITES ahead of the Standing Committee meeting in Geneva, the U.S. government submitted an unprecedented document to CITES on Feb. 3, requesting “that the standing committee defer any decision making that would effectuate immediate changes” to allow President Donald Trump’s new administration time to “familiarize itself” with the work of CITES.
Monkey-importing countries reject trade ban
After the CITES chair asked members of the standing committee to comment on the proposed trade suspension, it was Japan’s national CITES representative who spoke first on the matter. Speaking “on behalf of Asia,” the Japanese representative rejected the proposed trade suspension on Cambodian monkeys, saying that the recommendation was not in line with CITES procedures.
“There has been [a] submission from Cambodia, but there was not enough discussion about that,” Japan’s representative said. “Especially no decision by the [CITES] animals committee for the current recommendation of trade suspension.”
Japan’s national CITES representatives didn’t respond to questions emailed by Mongabay.
Delegates from Canada, China, Poland, Kuwait and the U.S. all agreed with Cambodia’s request, and so the CITES Standing Committee resolved to leave the trade of Cambodian long-tailed macaques under review until the CITES Conference of the Parties (COP20), which will be held from Nov. 24 to Dec. 5, 2025 in Uzbekistan. After this meeting, Cambodia’s trade status will be reviewed.
Poland’s CITES representative noted that they supported the original recommendation to suspend the trade of Cambodia’s long-tailed macaques, but was happy to compromise providing Cambodian authorities submit proper written evidence of compliance with the CITES Secretariat’s recommendations. Meanwhile, China’s CITES representative said it’s “not proper, it’s premature to single Cambodia out by recommending a suspension in trade at this time.”
While representatives from China, Japan and the U.S. didn’t disclose their countries’ respective investments and interests in the Southeast Asian monkey trade, Canada’s representative noted that Cambodian long-tailed macaques are purchased by Canadian research laboratories.
“In particular, laboratories from Canada work with one institution in Cambodia and each import is verified and we have confidence that, to date, the animals received have been captive-bred, our veterinary experts have also examined some of the questions around the breeding numbers and feel comfortable with some of the information that has been provided by Cambodia, suggesting that there is some more work to be done in terms of looking at some of these issues prior to establishing any sort of suspension of trade,” Canada’s representative told the CITES chair.
While Canada’s representative didn’t identify Charles Rivers Laboratories by name, the company has long been embroiled in the Cambodian monkey saga and is one of the most prominent biomedical research companies in Canada. The company’s involvement in the primate trade has drawn intense scrutiny from animal rights groups, and it was subpoenaed by the U.S. Department of Justice in relation to its Cambodian long-tailed macaque suppliers.
These facilities supply live long-tailed macaques — as well as specimens, including blood, body parts and tissue — largely to biomedical research laboratories where the monkeys are used in the development of vaccines and other medical research. The trade of live primates in 2023 surpassed $516 million according to the United Nations Comtrade database, with the United States and Japan the top importers for the year, spending $122 million and $96 million respectively.
The CITES Animals Committee had in December 2024 warned that Cambodian breeding facilities had reproduction rates “extremely high and can be deemed impossible on a regular basis” among captive-bred monkeys.
A species under pressure
Besides driving the already declining populations of long-tailed macaques in Cambodia and spurring a poaching boom that has seen bounties on monkeys soar into the tens of thousands of dollars, the use of wild-caught animals in lab-testing environments risks compromising research results and increasing the potential for zoonotic disease spillover.
The latest decision by CITES has disappointed conservationists, animal rights groups and scientists alike.
Mark Jones, head of policy at U.K. charity Born Free, was present at the CITES meeting in Geneva as an observer party, but wasn’t called upon to speak by the CITES chair. In an email to Mongabay, he called the decision “disappointing,” noting that thousands of endangered long-tailed macaques will be exported from Cambodia before CITES next reviews the issue at the end of 2025.
“The written evidence provided by Cambodia to CITES, the international wildlife trade regulator, contains claims about global populations and breeding rates in captive facilities that simply do not add up,” he said. “The capture of wild long-tailed macaques to stock cruel breeding farms, or to be laundered through those farms directly into international trade for biomedical and toxicological research, is an ongoing threat to wild populations, alongside widespread habitat loss and persecution. If the species is to recover, the international trade in live animals and the highly dubious activities of the captive breeding industry must be brought to book.”
Lisa Jones-Engel, senior science adviser on primate experimentation at PETA’s Laboratory Investigations Department, told Mongabay that the decision to continue allowing Cambodian breeding facilities to export long-tailed macaques wasn’t just disappointing — it was devastating.
“How much more do you have to have in front of you? All the data is there, the Animals Committee had done its job, even if Cambodia did put in those last-minute documents, those numbers are cooked,” Jones-Engel told Mongabay by phone.
“It’s so obvious that the system is rigged,” she added.
The only observer party called upon to speak by the CITES chair at the Feb. 4 meeting in Geneva was the National Association of Biomedical Research (NABR), a U.S. lobby group that’s a vocal proponent of the use of animals in biomedical research. Kevin McNelly, corporate vice president of Charles River Laboratories, sits on the board of the NABR.
“NABR was made aware of this proposal only two weeks before this meeting and like many others has not had sufficient time to review the information submitted by the United States or the Kingdom of Cambodia concerning this matter,” an NABR representative told the CITES chair. “In our opinion all parties and observers should have an opportunity to fully understand all data of concern before supporting a trade suspension.”
NABR has since issued a press release applauding the CITES decision, but others have objected.
In the face of rapidly vanishing habitats across Cambodia, coupled with aggressive new government approaches to ridding tourism sites of long-tailed macaques, the continued use of the species in the name of science is “certainly not sustainable” according to Pablo Fernández of Spanish activism group Abolición Vivisección.
Fernández referred to studies that have shown the decline of long-tailed macaque populations is a direct result of the demand from biomedical researchers, and pointed out that the destruction of monkey habitats often pushes the species into closer contact with humans, resulting in the perception that they’re more common and abundant than they really are.
“It’s the sense we have that this whole trade is accelerating,” he told Mongabay by phone. “It’s often what happens when you have this system of aggressive capitalism. They [the biomedical research industry] seem to be running from the problem, instead of thinking and being a bit more cautious with the situation of these animals, which, at the end of the day, it’s what their business is based on.”
Citations:
Warne, R. K., Moloney, G. K., & Chaber, A. (2023). Is biomedical research demand driving a monkey business? One Health, 16, 100520. doi:10.1016/j.onehlt.2023.100520
Conroy, G. (2023). How wild monkeys ‘laundered’ for science could undermine research. Nature, 623(7988), 672-673. doi:10.1038/d41586-023-03533-1
Meesawat, S., Warit, S., Hamada, Y., & Malaivijitnond, S. (2023). Prevalence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex among wild rhesus macaques and 2 subspecies of long-tailed macaques, Thailand, 2018–2022. Emerging Infectious Diseases, 29(3), 551-560. doi:10.3201/eid2903.221486
Gamalo, L. E., Ilham, K., Jones‐Engel, L., Gill, M., Sweet, R., Aldrich, B., … Hansen, M. F. (2023). Removal from the wild endangers the once widespread long‐tailed macaque. American Journal of Primatology, 86(3). doi:10.1002/ajp.23547
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