FORT LAUDERDALE – Dozens of vervet monkeys have lived in South Florida’s mangroves for a long time. But human interactions and urban potential risks threaten their survival.
Biologist Missy Williams won’t monkey all-around when it will come to preserving wildlife. It truly is why she started the Dania Seashore Vervet Project to conserve a team of African monkeys living in the shadow of Fort Lauderdale Worldwide Airport.
“My objective was to discover some type of welfare for them,” she said.
The 50 or so monkeys are not native to Florida. They are descended from about a dozen Vervet monkeys that escaped a lab eighty a long time ago and manufactured Dania Beach’s mangroves their city jungle their household.
“Considering the fact that they are non-indigenous we are unable to release them. So in its place of remaining euthanized or presented to one more facility in the pet trade, we are open up to give a quite safe property for these animals in have to have,” stated Williams.
Two of the monkeys currently residing in the sanctuary arrived from the wild, a third a single was provided up by its operator.
Williams suggests electrocutions existing the greatest menace to the monkeys.
“They like to climb on top rated of poles and from time to time they make get hold of with the wires,” she mentioned.
Some have been hit by vehicles whilst some others have been captured and held as pets.
“We actually have a well known TikTokker who stole just one of the monkeys in 2019,” stated Williams.
You will find presently no everlasting alternative for the monkeys’ security. Williams suggests she strategies to extend on her 16-acre sanctuary to give a lot more of the monkeys a house.
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