Taiwan Today

Chien Yu-chun struggled for a long time to film Formosan macaques in Ershui Township in Changhua County, central Taiwan. Despite his efforts to build a rapport with perhaps the most intelligent non-human species in Taiwan, he found that it was not so easy to approach the primates. “I think that’s because local fruit farmers have been hostile toward them,” he says of the monkeys’ highly vigilant attitude toward humans. “You know, those monkeys eat their crops and cause losses for them.”

The monkeys often ran away after catching their first glimpse of the cameraman, leaving Chien unable to do anything but watch the animals from a distance. “To get top-quality footage, I didn’t want to zoom in on monkeys that were far away,” he says. “And I needed to be near them to record their sounds.” After many fruitless attempts to mingle with the monkeys, the cameraman finally hit upon the idea of staying in the woods with them all day while wearing the same green-color clothes each time. The strategy worked, enabling Chien to capture the animals’ lives at close range, from feeding in early morning to napping in the afternoon, and well, engaging in monkey business from time to time.

Chien’s Alive and Lively Formosan Macaque was selected for screening at the 32nd annual International Wildlife Film Festival (IWFF) held in Montana in the United States in 2009. The 24-minute documentary film about Taiwan’s monkeys won three awards at the festival, including Honorable Mention for Cinematography. The main reason for that honor, according to Chien, was that the monkeys eventually behaved as if he was not there, allowing him to get intimate footage of their lives.

For commissioning Chien’s company to produce the film, the Nantou Forest District Office under the Forestry Bureau won an Honorable Mention for Scientific Content as well as a place on the finalist short list for the IWFF’s Government Agency Award, which is given to public-sector candidates for supporting films on wildlife. Alive and Lively Formosan Macaque was also added to the IWFF’s permanent film library and will be shown at ecology-related events around the United States.

Prior to Chien’s film, Formosan macaques never received much attention outside their homeland. In Taiwan, however, people have long been aware of the need to protect the monkeys, which are an endemic species and the only primates except for humans on the island. Nearly 30 years ago, the Forestry Bureau under the Council of Agriculture (COA) set aside a 94-hectare reserve area for the monkeys in Ershui Township in the southern part of a low-lying plateau known as Bagua Terrace.

In 1989, the Wildlife Conservation Act categorized the monkey as a rare and valuable species in the second grade of a three-grade classification system aimed at protecting animals in Taiwan. In 2006, however, the Bagua Terrace reserve was opened up to other uses, while the Nantou Forest District Office, which has jurisdiction over forested areas of much of central Taiwan, set up a small exhibition hall in Ershui dedicated to introducing the species to the public. The Nantou office commissioned Chien’s film for use in the exhibition hall, which is now operated by a non-governmental organization called the Changhua County Leisure Sightseeing Industrial Development Association. Alive and Lively Formosan Macaque began showing at the hall in 2008.

“The birth of the exhibition hall has a lot to do with the emerging ecotourism trend in Ershui and neighboring towns,” says Lin Oun-chiang, chief of the Conservation and Recreation Section under the Nantou Forest District Office. The area had previously developed a reputation for the quality ink stones—used for grinding sticks of solid ink and then holding the resulting fluid—found along the Zhuoshui River. Ershui’s drive to draw more visitors received a boost in 2000, when efforts began to publicize the tourism attractions of the nearby Jiji Line, a 30-kilometer branch rail line originally used to transport machinery and logs. More recently, Ershui has also gradually become known for a trail near the neighborhood of Fongbo Square, where hikers can easily catch a glimpse of Formosan macaques.

With the increasing contacts between man and monkey, however, have come frictions between the two species, an issue raised in the second half of Alive and Lively Formosan Macaque. Chang Shih-wei, an assistant researcher at the Endemic Species Research Institute in Jiji under the COA, says food is the major reason behind the tension between man and monkey. “It’s okay to give food to squirrels or birds in the wild, but it’s another thing if you feed monkeys,” he says. Indeed, Formosan macaques are not only quite nimble and intelligent, but individual monkeys are also capable of imitating the actions of other monkeys who successfully obtain food from human beings. Once macaques get used to obtaining human food, most of them tend to lose interest in feeding in the wild. According to Chang, a normal female macaque typically weighs no more than 6 kilograms, but one that has learned to obtain human food can grow to 17 kilograms.

The real problem is that such “spoiled” monkeys become daring enough to beg, harass or even attack humans for food. This problem is compounded by the fact that macaques are natural hosts for the herpes B virus, which can be transmitted to humans through contact. Untreated, humans infected with herpes B virus normally suffer increasing neurological dysfunction and a mortality rate of more than 70 percent.

Snack Attack

The monkey-feeding issue is especially serious in places such as the Tataka area of Yushan National Park. Tataka lies at an altitude of 2,600 meters and many hikers make a short stop there on their way to Jade Mountain, Taiwan’s highest peak. The monkeys at Tataka have lost most of their fear of humans and have become aggressive in their pursuit of food. The Shoushan Park area in Kaohsiung City is facing a similar problem, as reports of hikers being attacked by macaques there are not uncommon.

In Ershui Township, though, the situation is less worrying, as volunteers have taken turns educating tourists in the Fongbo Square area for years, according to Chen Pi-chin, director of the Changhua County Leisure Sightseeing Industrial Development Association. “Monkeys behave better here,” he says. “In other places, they’d jump directly on your head, or they’d get agitated if they heard the sound of a bag being zipped open.” Despite the volunteers’ efforts, however, the phenomenon of people feeding monkeys persists in Ershui.

Similarly, volunteers in Tataka have been asking tourists not to feed the monkeys for more than 10 years, but the problem remains. In response, Yushan National Park Headquarters and a volunteer team called the Yushan Brigade held a conference in February in which attendees discussed a project aimed at preventing tourists from feeding monkeys. The Yushan Brigade planned to strengthen ranger patrols in the park and enforce the prohibition on feeding the macaques with fines of up to NT$3,000 (US$94). The Kaohsiung City government also is training volunteers for the purpose of educating visitors about the negative effects of feeding the monkeys.

While the macaques can be a nuisance for tourists, close contact with them results in major headaches for many fruit growers. “What am I going to do with these monkeys?” a grower angrily asks in Chien’s film. “They come here to ruin my orchard, plucking pieces of fruit even before they’re ripe. And they cause damage to the roof of my house,” she adds, looking at cracked tiles of her roof.

Having long played hide-and-seek with the monkeys, Chien notes that local fruit growers often complain about the primates’ mischievous acts, although they also speak about how cute the macaques are. According to the cameraman, these farmers frequently provided him with very helpful information about the monkeys, without which the shooting of the film would have been much more challenging. “They told me when [the monkeys] would come down from the mountains to find fruit grown at a lower altitude and where I could find them,” Chien says. “In this respect, the farmers are more helpful than the doctoral dissertations on the species I read before working on the film.”

In fact, most farmers do not mind sharing some of their crops with the monkeys, says Chen Chi-jung, chief of the Zhushan Station of the Nantou Forest District Office, which has been keeping track of the monkeys in Ershui for decades. “The one thing that really ticks farmers off is the way they waste food,” Chen says. “Oftentimes, the monkeys give the fruit only a couple of bites before getting their hands on another piece.”

Chien Yu-chun, however, suggests that people try to understand that humans have encroached on turf long claimed by monkeys. “Monkeys don’t speak,” he says. “They can’t tell you how they feel about this.”

Increasing Contact

It is difficult to say just how many macaques Taiwan has today. The most recent survey was conducted by the Endemic Species Research Institute about 10 years ago and resulted in a very rough estimate of between 140,000 and 380,000 individuals. In light of the increasing number of cases in which they come into contact with humans, however, Chen believes the number of Formosan macaques is rising. “Except for human beings, clouded leopards used to be the macaques’ only natural enemy, but not anymore,” Chen says of the big cats, which have almost certainly become extinct in Taiwan. With the clouded leopard out of the picture, the food chain has changed to favor the survival of Formosan macaques.

COA researcher Chang Shih-wei says that the 1991 ban on logging in Taiwan’s natural forests has been crucial for the survival of macaques. The protection offered by the Wildlife Conservation Act, which bars killing the monkeys under most circumstances, has also played a role in helping the macaque recover.

With the number of reports of human-monkey interactions growing, the anecdotal evidence would seem to indicate that the macaque population is also growing. At any rate, the macaque’s protected status was lowered from the second highest to the third highest category for protected animals in 2008.

“But they’ll be protected no matter what because they are the only non-human primate species in Taiwan,” Chen Chi-jung explains.

Local farmers and growers, however, are still legally allowed to kill macaques that harm their crops, as long as they report their intentions to the appropriate authorities beforehand. But macaques in Taiwan tend to fare better than their relatives elsewhere. In Japan, the monkeys have been identified as a serious problem plaguing lumber plantations and farmers’ fields. According to the COA’s Chang, Japan has established hunting quotas for monkeys, with the result that more than 10,000 macaques die at the hands of humans every year.

Although there are no quotas in Taiwan, there is also apparently no sure cure for the headaches the monkeys cause farmers. Various non-lethal means to reduce the crop depredation caused by the macaques have been tried, including setting off firecrackers and playing radios at a loud volume. Those who grow high-end crops sometimes opt to take costly, but humane, measures such as stringing electrified nets over their orchards. “The nets are not deadly,” Chang says. “They won’t kill the monkeys.”

In the end, it is a difficult and complex issue of balancing the needs of humans and the endemic monkey species. Farmers and growers undoubtedly suffer losses caused by the monkeys, but humans are “encroaching” on areas where the macaques have lived for millennia. “From the ecological viewpoint, it’s humans that disturb the life of the monkeys. They grow fruit and tea in the places inhabited by the monkeys,” the narrator for Alive and Lively Formosan Macaque intones, adding that “it’s just so hard for the monkeys to resist the temptation of the tasty fruit.” For Chien, the answer to the man or monkey question is obvious, and through the film he hopes to educate others about the need to develop a healthier relationship with our fellow primates.

The Macaque in the Mirror

According to Chien Yu-chun’s documentary, the ancestors of Taiwan’s Formosan macaque originated in mainland China. During the last ice age some hundreds of thousands of years ago, the Taiwan Strait was covered by glacier ice over which many animal species could move easily, allowing them to range from the Asian continent to the island. After the ice retreated, the monkeys in Taiwan gradually evolved into a unique species—the Formosan macaque, or Macaca cyclopis.

There are 21 known species of monkeys under the genus Macaca, 20 of which live in Asia. The only other species is found in northern Africa. The 21 species are classified by well-known American primatologist Jack Fooden into four categories according to the anatomical differences of their sex organs. According to Fooden, the Formosan macaque, Japanese macaque, long-tailed macaque and Rhesus macaque belong to the same group. The most obvious difference in the appearance of these species is the length of their tails. The appendage of the long-tailed macaque is 40 to 65 centimeters long, while the Japanese species has the shortest tail, averaging less than 10 centimeters in length. The tail of the Taiwanese macaque comes in second in the length competition, measuring 36 to 45 centimeters long, or roughly four-fifths of the animal’s total length.

The mating season for Formosan macaques lasts from October to January, and mothers give birth to young from April to June. Chien says that based on his experience of filming Alive and Lively Formosan Macaque in Ershui Township, wildlife watchers have a better chance of seeing a troop of monkeys in the early morning, as this is when they feed on tender leaves, insects and the fruit grown by humans. The Ershui macaques can often be seen arriving at orchards in large numbers in late spring, when farmers are preparing to harvest fruit like longans and lichees.

The primary habitat for the Formosan macaque consists of mountainous areas at an altitude of less than 2,500 meters. The monkeys can be found in many parts of Taiwan, however, ranging from plains areas, where they are attracted by fruit grown by humans, to peaks more than 3,000 meters high.

Macaques are skittish and highly mobile, making it difficult to give an overall population estimate. Chang Shih-wei, a researcher at the Endemic Species Research Institute, says it is unclear whether the number of Formosan macaques has increased since the institute’s last survey was conducted some 10 years ago, but notes that the monkeys are now more frequently seen in certain areas because of their constant contact with tourists who feed them.

Write to Oscar Chung at oscar@mail.gio.gov.tw