Plan to cull Gibraltar’s monkey is cruel

Apr 20 2008 by Ken Oxley, Sunday Sun

I’M rarely sentimental about animals but it seems to me that the planned culling of around 25 of Gibraltar’s famous Barbary macaques is plain wrong.

The monkeys — arguably the Rock’s biggest tourist attraction — are apparently getting out of hand.

The 200-plus population had been confined to the upper reaches of the Rock but some have recently been venturing into tourist areas and, according to the Government, “causing a nuisance”.

Is that really a good enough reason to sanction the slaughter of animals which are our closest relatives?

Macaques are highly social and intelligent creatures that live within family units. To randomly kill 25 of them seems unnecessarily cruel.

Especially when — as the International Primate Protection League has pointed out — there are far more humane ways to control the population.

A programme using contraceptive implants, for example, has yet to show results but could easily be stepped up.

Like millions of tourists, I regarded seeing the macaques up close as one of the highlights of my trip to Gibraltar a few years back.

The Government owes these creatures a huge debt of gratitude. Wiping out a tenth of the population seems a strange way to say “thank you”.