Dr Nancy Priston

There are three troops of monkeys that I work with here in the Lambusango and Kakenauwe forest reserves and surrounding farmland. They’ve been habituated and are used to being followed by me and my guides while we record data about their behaviour, their range and what they’re eating.

One of the troops I’ve worked with the longest (13 years!) is the Kawelli troop. It’s always been a small troop – usually around 25 individuals or so and they live in the remnant patches of forest surrounding the farmland in the village of Kawelli, a 30 minute drive from La Bundo Bundo village where I stay.

Kawelli has always been such a pretty little village and although it’s changed a lot over the years it’s still such a beautiful place with lovely people.

The people are all subsistence farmers and it’s a pretty simple life. Clothes are still washed in the river, days are spent in the farms or at home preparing food for dinner etc.

Although subsistence farming is the main source of food and income, some people also keep cows

As i said before, the farms and forest patches surrounding the village are home to one of the troops of monkeys I work with.

This troop is the most well habituated troop and we can get as close as a few meters from them without them minding at all. The troop last year had 25 members but sadly we lost 19 members of the troop after one of the farmers put poison down in the farm (here’s last years post about it). Because the monkeys have very little natural habitat left they often raid farms for food. This particular farmer lost a huge part of his banana crop to the monkeys. Bananas have a high price at market at the moment so provide valuable additional income, monkey this farmer planned on using for his son’s schooling. When the monkeys raided he was so fed up he spent 6 months worth of income on poison which is put inside bananas. 19 troop members died. This left only 6 – 2 males and 4 females. One of the males was very old, the other young and last year the upheaval and loss of a leader the troop resulted in them often splitting up and foraging alone.

I fully expected to come back this year and find that the troop had disintegrated and that they’d emigrated to other troops or died. To my delight though they’re still here, still together and they have two new babies! So the troop looks like it will survive 🙂

I’ve been out following the troop quite a bit and they’re doing well. I go out with my two guides Rudi and Namsir at 6am and we start by going to the tree the monkeys slept in the night before. If they haven’t moved off we then follow them for the day, recording their behaviour and ranging patterns. If they’re not at the tree then we search their usual feeding places, and ask the local kids if they have seen them. Usually we find them within a few hours and follow them, getting pretty close, until late afternoon if we can.

The young male has really matured and bulked up, taking on the role of leading the troop.

He’s been taking them in to the coconut plantations a fair bit. He climbs up the coconut palm and then twists off the ripe coconuts which fall to the ground where the rest of the troop open them up and tuck in. Bad monkeys! Let’s hope the farmer doesn’t get too angry about this!