Life in Phana

Phana Macaque Project

 

 
The Phana Macaque Project is taking a lot of my time at the moment. I'm not complaining because I am enjoying the contacts we have made so far and it does look as if people in various parts of the world are interested in coming to study our long-tailed macaques. We have interest so far from academics and students in Thailand, England, Japan and the USA.

One way we have promoted the project can be seen if you click on the link below: 

 

Download Phana macaque project

You may have to be a little patient. It will open in Adobe Reader.

I previously posted about the project HERE and you can find other posts in the category 'long-tailed macaques'.

 

Who are you calling an ape?

Apes? Who gives a monkey's? Well, I do, for one.

The Tetsaban Phana website www.phanacity.com has this artist's impression of the planned study centre to be built in Don Chao Poo.  It looks good to me, but I am much less keen on an alternative design that features a large disney-like structure. We are hoping that the centre will be an educational resource as well as a fun place to visit. There is no reason to think that education and fun are mutually exclusive (though years spent in school might suggest that they are).

 

What worries me a little is that the series of pictures and drawings begin with the title "APE MUSEUM". Our monkeys are NOT apes. Apes have no tails. Ours have LONG tails. They are long-tailed macaques. I think everyone is agreed that the centre will contain exhibitions relating to monkeys other than macaques, and that will include apes. But while all apes are monkeys, not all monkeys are apes. 

Just before we left Thailand last month, Pensri and I visited Thailand's leading expert on primates, Professor Dr Suchinda Malaivijitnond, director of the Primate Research Centre at Chulalongkorn University. She had lots of good advice for us, and has agreed to take further part in the project to set up the centre. We mentioned to her that the Governor of Amnat Charoen felt that 'Primate' was not a word widely understood (hence the need for a study centre, in part) so he has suggested 'Ape' instead. Dr Suchinda agreed, but said that the best alternative to 'primate' would be 'monkey'. There is no problem with the Thai title, because as you can see above, it would translate as 'Monkey Museum'. So PLEASE, TETSABAN PHANA:  use the English word 'monkey' for the sake of accuracy.

Another academic, the first we got on board, is Dr Panee Wannitikul of Suranaree University of Technology, Korat. She suggested the name 'Centre for Monkey and Environment Studies'. She pointed out that in a conserved forest there will be plenty of other species (bird, amphibian, insect, plant, fish ...) that make this name appropriate and hopefully of interest to students of schools and universities.

Next week we have an appointment to see Dr Stephen Lea, Professor of Psychology at Exeter University. He specialises in animal behavior / animal social behaviour. His students study monkeys at a local zoo. We're hoping he can point us in the direction of useful audio-visual resources for exhibition. And we are hoping we can point him in the direction of some non-zoo monkeys in Phana. 

 

What should we do about the monkeys?

What should we do about the monkeys? In Phana, at least, we have to continue down the road we have been going for the last thirty years or so. There can be no turning back, I'm afraid. But after posting about our long-tailed macaques all this week, I feel I must sum up what it is that we have done. I have already written a lot about them, so I'll try to keep this brief.

By feeding the colony that lives in Don Chao Poo, we have:

• protected them from farmers and others who might have killed them in order to defend their crops and property
• limited their 'ranging'
• prolonged their lives, resulting in population growth and a diminishing share of their natural habitat and food supply
• made them become lazy and greedy
• made them become familiar with humans, unafraid of them, and sometimes aggressive towards them
• introduced them to inappropriate foods.

In effect, we have domesticated them.

On the other hand, if we had fired catapaults at them and had not fed them, they would have lived a more natural life. They would have remained the 'wild' creatures we imagine want them to be.

But we would have been denied the feel-good factor.

I hope that if Phana succeeds in its current aim to set up some sort of educational centre in or near Don Chao Poo, we will learn how to treat our monkeys better and begin to see them for themselves and not merely as a means of making ourselves feel good.

 

A Breakaway Colony of Long-Tailed Macaques in Phana

On the Phana ring-road there is a small colony of long-tailed macaque monkeys. It isn't clear how they got there, several kms from Don Chao Poo forest. One explanation is that when a truck-load of monkeys was stolen from the forest and some of them were rescued by the police, they were left here. I am not sure how credible that is, seeing that the forest is nearby, and the police were local and knew exactly where the monkeys had come from. You can read about this HERE.  A breakaway colony seems more likely. Certainly they would not have been imported here by the farmer who now has them as neighbours.

I have been cycling past the spot where this colony lives for some time now. The large vinyl poster on the left was for some time the only way I had of knowing there were monkeys here. They are very shy, unlike the ones in Don Chao Poo.  One morning, about a week after this became my preferred route, there were 15 of them lined up along the bridge as if they were waiting for me to sail past. It was as if a meeting had been called so that they could all see the farang. They just watched me, didn't ask for anything, didn't ask me where I was going or where I came from. Nice.

 

I've never seen that many since then, usually just two or three of them playing in the trees, or sitting by the roadside.

 

There are two reasons why they are so shy. The first is because of the large vinyl notice. There are two of these, one either side of the road, either side of the bridge.

The notice tells people NOT TO FEED the monkeys here.

 

 

The second reason is this: I found it next to the farmer's field hut. A bag of stones, all about the same size. Pretty deadly, I imagine, when fired from a catapault. The farmer naturally does not want his crops eaten or destroyed by marauding monkeys.

 

And I am fairly sure that the monkeys learn quite quickly that the farmer won't hesitate to fire at them. In the same way, they seem to have learnt that people are not going to feed them, even if they stop at the bridge as I sometimes do.

So we have two colonies of long-tailed macaques in Phana. The large colony lives in a forest and receives much of its food from the tetsaban and from passing tourists. That is what they have come to expect. And that is what they have come to depend on. In some cases it is what they have come to demand and to fight over.

The other, smaller, colony is living a much more natural life. It fears human contact and so avoids it. It finds food in the trees, water in the small river that flows under the bridge. On the other hand, the monkeys do range in search of food, and no doubt they are a nuisance to nearby farmers, who can't always be on guard to defend their crops.

Two colonies; two solutions. In tomorrow's post I'll consider the two solutions alongside each other and try to weigh the pros and cons of each.

 

 

 

 

 

With the wild things in Phana

 

Feeding the monkeys in Don Chao Poo forest, Phana, can be a very rewarding experience. But it can sometimes be an alarming experience. Sometimes the monkeys are calm and patient; sometimes they are greedy and aggressive. Sometimes we are calm, too, and sometimes we panic too easily and monkeys and humans become frightened.

One of the things that causes lots of people to panic is when a monkey starts to pull at your clothing, or to climb up it. But as you see here, there is no need to panic. But at times when they are particularly hungry perhaps, there will be a scramble to get food from visitors. But this does not always happen. If you have plenty of food to give, and especially if you can scatter it on the ground, it is much less likely to cause aggressive behaviour amongst the monkeys. And sudden, mock-aggressive movements by you, such as swinging the bag towards the invasive monkey, will make them keep their distance.

Human panic is one of the reasons that plastic bags get strewn about; someone less confident than this monk might allow a monkey to snatch the bag and run off into the forest with it. More often, though, it is humans who dispose of the bags they bring by throwing them down when empty. As I have mentioned in a previous post, the few bins there are in the forest are useless because the monkeys pull out all the litter and scatter it about.

 But you don't have to feed the monkeys to enjoy being with them. Early in the morning, round about mid-day and in the middle of the afternoon seem to be times when the monkeys are relaxed, not particularly searching for food, and you can walk and stand and even sit among them and enjoy a peaceful time with them. You can watch them at different times playing, grooming, mating, or just sitting quietly.

Here are some pictures I took on a Sunday afternoon at a sala next to the pond in the forest. The monkeys were happy to share the place with me, but there was no doubt in their mind that the tetsaban had provided the place primarily for their leisure.

 

It was an idyllic time for all of us, I think. I half expected one of them to start grooming me; I felt a little left out, actually.

Why do we love them so?

Phana is sometimes known as 'Monkey Town'. I am not sure that the people of Phana really like that, but I notice that there is a large, framed collage of photos labelled MONKEY TOWN just outside the Mayor's office at Tetsaban Phana. Certainly the monkeys that live in our local forest are a big draw for tourists. What is less certain is whether or not Phana gains anything from this tourism. We gain litter, yes, as my previous post pointed out,  but that may be all other than a certain notoriety. But I wonder whether Phana needs to gain anything, at least in the sense of profiting from the presence of the monkeys.

The monkeys do make us feel good, somehow. Phana lives quite comfortably with them (give or take a few complaints from farmers whose land adjoins the forest). It has generally been regarded as auspicious that the monkeys live in Don Chao Poo, home to the town's guardian spirit, and to four Buddha images. Somehow people feel privileged to be host to the monkeys. The people who come from outside to feed them evidently feel good about doing so, even if some of the girls scream when large monkeys make a grab for food they are holding. 

Why do we love them so? 

They make us feel at one with nature, I think. We are consorting with 'the wild things' when we go into the forest to feed them.

Feeding them makes us feel kind and generous.

Feeding these monkeys makes us forget that we have exterminated most of the wild things around here. 

 

 

 

At the same time, we see these long-tailed macaques as very human-like:

the babies are cute, the mothers take good care of them;

the young males respect the older males, the older males look wise and are very macho.

 

This may be the world as we would like it to be.

 

It is time for Phana to re-think its relationship with the monkeys here. The Governor of Amnat Charoen Province has suggested (with a little prodding, perhaps) that some sort of 'Centre' should be established in connection with them. Selling souvenirs may have been the extent of his thinking on the subject. But several people have put forward the idea of a Study Centre and contact has been made with an academic at a university in Isan who is interested in the study of primates and their place in the ecosystem. First, though, we must decide exactly what sort of relationship we want to have with the monkeys, and what sort of habitat we are willing to allow them.

COMMENTS and SUGGESTIONS would be very much appreciated.

Phana's Pride or Shame?

The people of Phana have much to be proud of. And they are right to feel pride in the cleanliness of the streets, the 'zero waste' campaign that recycles large quantities of waste; the community spirit and community action that enables campaigns such as this, initiated by the tetsaban, to succeed. And the tetsaban is rightly proud of the prizes and the national exposure and acclaim it has won.

The people of Phana are also proud of Don Chao Poo, a conservation site for more than 50 years. And proud of the long-tailed macaque monkeys that live in the forest, some 500-600 of them. The monkeys attract tourists, mostly from the surrounding villages and towns but some from further afield. After the famous Buddha image in Wat Phra Lao Thepnimit, they are what puts Phana on the map.

But there's the rub: put monkeys and tourists together and one of the things you get is litter. Tourists bring food for the monkeys, or buy it in the stalls outside the forest, and much of the food is in plastic bags. Monkeys grab plastic bags; the wind blows them around; the waste bins are a waste of time because the monkeys raid them and scatter the contents. But you can't blame the monkeys; and if the tourists should take more care and take home their litter whenever possible, at least they are being thoughtful and generous in providing food for the monkeys.

Recent trips Pensri and I have made into the forest have dismayed us both: the amount of litter is, quite frankly, disgusting. It makes a mockery of the forest as a conservation area, and it makes a mockery of Phana considering itself a clean place. Here are some pictures I have taken recently.

This one shows plastic bags that have been discarded and blown into the forest close to the track. This degree of litter should be easy to deal with if it is removed quickly, by which I mean daily or at least every other day.

 

But the accumulation of rubbish such as this is on another scale altogether. It is not wind-blown. It is not deposited by monkeys. Some of it is embedded in the soil, so it has been here for years, not days. 

This litter has  been quite deliberately collected here and it is easy to work out WHEN and WHY and WHO by. 

Don Chao Poo forest is used by the tetsban and the amphur to hold official 'opening ceremonies' for a variety of occasions. Before the Governor or his representative or some other dignitary is whisked into the forest in a motorcade, the roads are  'cleaned up' -- a euphemism for brushing all the litter into the undergrowth, out of sight. Cliches, maybe, but relevant and accurate: brushing the problem under the carpet; out  of sight, out of mind.

So what is to be done? Well, it is a long-term problem that will only get worse if plans to encourage more tourists to visit Phana come to anything. In the short term, Pensri and I went to the forest last Wednesday and spent about 90 minutes collecting litter. We filled 5 black bin bags in that time. We filled the first one twice because some monkeys came along and ripped it open and re-scattered the litter.  A good demonstration of part of the problem. But we also saw lots of evidence that the monkeys are only part of the problem. It is not, I think, the monkeys who are drinking beer, milk, fruit juice, eating sweets, smoking cigarettes or reading and and discarding magazines full of pictures of naked women. I hope the monkeys know better than to do any of that, though I know they learn fast.

On Thursday we were joined by a friend of Pensri's and three young students from Phana Suksa. On Friday there were five young students from Phana Suksa. On those two days we collected more than 30 bags full of litter and then went to have duck noodle soup together in Ban Don Kwan.

The man in the picture here is employed by the tetsaban to spend a couple of hours a day in the forest, putting down tetsaban-provided rice for them, sweeping up some of the leaves. There is no blame attached to him for the litter: there is far too much of it for one person to deal with.

The youngsters here all wanted to continue working on the weekend but we oldies needed a rest. We will be back in the forest on Monday, but by then the weekend feeding by tourists will have introduced a lot more plastic bags. Never mind, it is likely that we will have removed the biggest proportion of the long-term litter in another two mornings of work. Then it will be up to the community to decide how to tackle the problem in a way that will make a blitz such as ours unnecessary again.

For the rest of this week I will post blogs with some of my thoughts about the 'monkey/litter problem' in Phana. I hope readers will offer some suggestions, too.

Some visitors are just too smug

Some visitors to our house and garden in Thailand are just too smug. This recent one, for example.

But we let them stay anyway.

 
 

In the past I often used the term "lazy toad" (unwisely, I agree)  in relation to our children. But I have also had irrefutable proof this week that the phrase certainly is not applicable to either of them.

I never really knew why I chose to pick on toads. But since getting to know the one pictured above, I know now.

 

Guest Blogger in Phana

Today's post has been written by my guest blogger, Esme Kwiatkowski. Esme visited Phana (not for the first time) in February this year. She particularly enjoyed going around the village with her father taking photographs and when she got back to England she put them into a booklet which she then took to school.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The photo of the spirit house was not taken in Phana (we only have three small spirit houses of this type in Phana) and Esme took the elephant ride while she was staying near Prachuab.

I hope you enjoyed Esme's book as much as I did.

 
 

Pic of the Day 1-7 March 2010

These are the first week's Pic of the Day for this month. I plan to post at the end of each week in case you have missed them. Click on a thumbnail to see an enlarged image.

All this week's pics were taken in Phana with the exception of the 'welcome to this house' sign which was on a beautiful new house in a village on the way to Ubon Ratchathani.

You can see them as well as the new Pic of the Day by using the tab at the top of this page.