A TALE OF FEW SPECIES: The Endangered Species Act’s radical potential for animals in captivity
The biomedical industry demand for long-tailed macaques is so high that, analysts reported last year, a single animal could be sold for as much as $60,000. US scientists have been using such large numbers of these monkeys since the 1970s, that their population has declined by 40% and are now listed as endangered. On arrival at pharmaceutical companies and research institutions, they’re destined to live in cages and face experimentation to test everything from the weight-loss drug Ozempic to Covid-19 vaccines.
DAYTON MARTINDALE: The playful, fruit-loving Macaques monkeys have the misfortune of being a standard research model used for toxicology testing in the biomedical industry. In recent years, exporters based largely in their native range of Southeast Asia have sold more than 30,000 long-tailed macaques annually to the US, largely for laboratory use.
Biomedical industry demand for long-tailed macaques is so high that, analysts reported last year, a single animal could be sold for as much as $60,000. On arrival at pharmaceutical companies and research institutions, they’re destined to live in cages and face experimentation to test everything from the weight-loss drug Ozempic to Covid-19 vaccines.
US scientists have been using large numbers of these monkeys since the 1970s, when India halted exports of rhesus macaques, and researchers had to find a new, more easily replaceable species for lethal pharmaceutical testing. Long-tailed macaques’ relative abundance in the wild meant they fit the bill. Unfortunately, they’re not so abundant in the wild anymore.
While the animals proliferate in US laboratories, they are struggling in their native habitat, and the animal testing industry is partly to blame. Long-tailed macaque populations declined by 40 percent from the mid-1980s to 2006, and in 2022, they were listed as endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a global authority on wildlife threats. The IUCN named several causes for the macaques’ decline, including habitat loss, the pet trade, subsistence hunting, and capture for biomedical research. Throughout the 2010s, 60 percent of the more than 400,000 long-tailed macaques exported from Asia went to the US.
On paper, most long-tailed macaques imported by the US are labeled as captive-bred — meaning they came from facilities that breed them for research rather than from the wild. But some experts believe that illegal trade in wild-caught macaques is widespread, and that many of those that end up in US labs have actually been trafficked from the wild. In November 2022, the Department of Justice indicted eight people allegedly involved in a smuggling ring that brought more than 2,600 wild long-tailed macaques from Cambodia into the US under false permits labeling them captive-bred.
Then last April, amid growing concerns about the species, a coalition of animal rights activists, conservation groups, and scientists led by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) petitioned the federal government to list the long-tailed macaque under the Endangered Species Act.
This could have radical implications: If successful, their call might not only end imports of long-tailed macaques, but also help address the physical and psychological distress they face in US testing labs and perhaps even end their use in research altogether. And it could do that for all members of the species — whether they were abducted from the wild or have lived their whole lives in a cage.
The PETA-led petition’s potential to upend a pillar of biomedical research in the US highlights what may be an under-appreciated aspect of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), a landmark federal law passed 50 years ago last month to protect species at risk of extinction. While its most high-profile successes include such symbols of the American frontier as the bald eagle, the Florida panther, and the grizzly bear, the law is not just for protecting animals in wild habitats from human encroachment. It also calls for better treatment of endangered animals in captivity.
Although the exact status of captive animals under the ESA is far from settled — subject to shifting regulation, controversial loopholes, and evolving case law — its wide-ranging protections promise to free endangered animals from many forms of exploitation that are beyond the reach even of laws ostensibly designed to stop animal cruelty. The 1966 Animal Welfare Act, for example, merely sets minimal standards for the conditions of animal use, such as minimum cage sizes for animals used in experiments — thereby taking for granted that animals will be harmed for profit-seeking purposes like entertainment, drug development, or cosmetic testing.
But the ESA provides a basis for challenging such harm. It prohibits any “take” of an endangered animal, which the law defines as “to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect, or to attempt to engage in any such conduct.” It also allows citizens to directly sue entities that they believe are violating the law, making it much easier to enforce than the Animal Welfare Act. SOURCE…
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