After recently receiving a grant from the Resources for Community Resilience R4CR funding program, the Sint Maarten Nature Foundation announced last week that it was starting its invasive vervet monkey research project on the island.
The project will focus on developing a sustainable management plan to reduce and manage the island's vervet monkey population (Chlorocebus pygerythrus). Research will assess the size of the population, the best ways to capture it and manage the population, and methods that can be applied in the long term.
The six-month project will be coordinated by Alice Manley, a recent graduate in animal behavior from Anglia Ruskin University in England. "The choice was made to focus on developing a solid long-term management plan, as the short-term solution to culling will lead to similar monkey population levels in a few years," said a member of the association. This monkey species was introduced to the island some time ago and has no local natural predators. “This leads to high reproduction rates. It's time to act ! _AF
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