Will Trump Admin End the Monkey Wildlife Trade Where Biden Failed?

Update (January 27, 2025): PETA and more than two dozen primate experts, including Jane Goodall and Birutė Galdikas, submitted to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service for the second time two listing petitions seeking protections for long-tailed and southern pig-tailed macaques under the Endangered Species Act before the animal experimentation industry drives them to extinction. The petitions are available here and here.

PETA hopes the incoming Trump administration will pick up the ball dropped under the last administration and end the trafficking of illegally wild-caught monkeys and sales of international captive-bred monkeys, now decimating the species. It was under the previous Trump administration that the Fish & Wildlife Service initiated a sweeping investigation into a worldwide monkey laundering operation based in Cambodia. Referencing the investigation, the CITES Secretariat recently recommended a trade ban on long-tailed macaques from Cambodia.
PETA previously submitted petitions under the Biden administration in April 2023. The agency shamefully denied them after dragging its feet for more than 500 days before reaching a decision that was supposed to take no more than 90.

PETA has since obtained documents showing current and former agency employees, including a former principal deputy director and members of an animal experimentation lobbying group, tried to inappropriately influence the review process by submitting comments and seeking a meeting in an apparent effort to persuade the agency to rely on outside information provided by the experimentation industry.

The new petition for long-tailed macaques cites recent evidence, including a Science Advances publication showing that the species’ populations in Asia are 80% smaller than expected. It also cites an analysis showing that removing female long-tailed macaques, the favored monkey in the experimentation industry, from their habitat leads to plummeting populations.

Here’s how you can help monkeys:

Please urge the Fish and Wildlife Service to send more than 1,000 monkeys allegedly illegally imported into the U.S. to sanctuaries:

Urge the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to end all monkey imports:

Original post:

Why have endangered monkeys been sent to the U.S. by the thousands, destined for cruel and deadly experiments?

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the world’s most comprehensive information source on the global conservation status of animals, issued a dire report in July 2022: Animal experimentation has pushed two species of monkeys to the brink of extinction.

Recent assessments of wild populations of long-tailed and pig-tailed macaques, conducted by primatologists throughout Southeast Asia, yielded staggering data on the increasing threats to these once plentiful monkeys. Based on the data, the IUCN elevated these two species from “vulnerable” to “endangered,” landing both of them on its Red List of Threatened Species, among the other most endangered species on the planet. The IUCN warned that if immediate action isn’t taken, these species will face catastrophic population declines in coming years.

A devastating and reversible threat facing long-tailed macaques is their trapping and export for the primate experimentation industry.

These species have been part of the social and cultural traditions throughout Asia for millennia. They play critical roles in the ecosystem and are individuals with the right to lead their own lives in their own homes—but they’ve succumbed to the experimentation industry’s demand for a steady stream of animals for misleading and wasteful experiments. Every year, tens of thousands of long-tailed macaques are imported, and many are caught up in a monkey-abduction pipeline that’s emptying Asia’s forests and filling the cages of commercial importers and experimenters in the U.S. Experts tell PETA that there will soon be no wild long-tailed macaques left in Cambodia, Laos, or Vietnam. The demand for these animals to be captured and sent to the U.S. has surged, and the false claims issued by experimenters about a supposed “monkey shortage” have likely played a role in alleged monkey laundering and smuggling.

In light of the IUCN’s findings and the subsequent acceleration of the populations’ decline in their natural habitats, the FWS has the authority and the obligation to add long-tailed and pig-tailed macaques to the list of animals protected under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Listing them could stop the importation of these primates abducted from their homes in nature and require the implementation of a plan for the species’ recovery.

The FWS needs to act!

There’s no time to waste. The future of these monkeys—and their native homes that depend on them—are in the hands of the agency.