Barbary macaque campaign: great success despite of counteractions
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News -
News
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Monday, 09 August 2010
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In the blistering heat of South-Spain some of our colleagues and volunteers had a tough job to do. Despite of counteractions of the Algeciras harbor police, they managed to hand out thousands of flyers and sun blinds for windshields to the tourists leaving for Morocco, as this is the harbor all the ferries to Morocco leave from.
 The blinds had the following text printed on them: Protegez les singes de Maroc which means Protect the monkeys of Morocco. In the flyer people could read more about the situation of the Barbary macaque that lives in Morocco: the fact that baby macaques are being stolen from their families and are being sold on the Moroccan markets. This resulting in a possible threat of extinction for the groups of Barbary macaques living in the wild on one hand and on the other hand the overcrowded European shelters, because people want to get rid of those little ones sooner or later.
Support
For all our colleagues and volunteers this job was not only tiring but also thrillingly exiting at times. They even had to go undercover sometimes dressed as harbor employees! When their cover was blown and they were told to leave, they just left and started again elsewhere, for example in Tarifa, a little more to the west of Algeciras.
Apart from the hostile approach of the harbor police our team got support from almost everybody else, including Customs and even the Guardia Civil!!
 Keep up the good work
After a month of hard labour which usually started each day before the first ferry left and ended with the last ferry out of sight, our team is satisfied with the result and is very determined and motivated to carry on. Algeciras is not the best place to do this in future because the team might get arrested there, but they will keep up their work in Tarifa. If this campaign results in less Barbary macaques being sold and more traders being unable to get rid of their merchandise, they consider their efforts to be worthwhile. More importantly, the merchants hopefully and most likely, will not be going into the woods next spring to get new stock.
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