Urge the Department of the Interior to Save Endangered Monkeys

UN LAB Middleware Label: Title Ends

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has released its 2025 Red List, confirming that long-tailed macaques, a favorite species of experimenters, will remain endangered—with an even more drastic rate of decline than previously assessed—despite pressure from the primate experimentation industry to delist them.

Photo provided to PETA.

A burn pile containing diseased long-tailed macaques at a monkey breeding warehouse in Cambodia that received smuggled monkeys and supplied U.S. laboratories.

Long-tailed macaques are widely imported to the U.S. by companies such as Charles River Laboratories for use in pointless and deadly experiments. The experimentation industry began lobbying the IUCN after it listed the species in 2022, and the organization agreed to reassess the classification at the industry's urging.

But in making its decision, the IUCN, the world's foremost authority on endangered species, relied on a growing and overwhelming body of evidence showing the species in drastic population decline worldwide, driven in part by the experimentation industry's demand.

For instance, a Science Advances publication shows the species' populations in Asia are 80% smaller than expected, and a population variability analysis shows that removing female long-tailed macaques, the favored monkey in the experimentation trade, leads to plummeting populations. A recent investigative report by PETA has uncovered just how deep the corruption in Vietnam’s monkey trade goes.

The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) oversees the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). While DOI sets broad policy, it is FWS that has the legal mandate to act. FWS must initiate status reviews for species in danger of extinction, yet it continues to allow imports of endangered long-tailed macaques for deadly experiments instead of halting the trade.

PETA and other primate experts, including the late Dr. Jane Goodall, filed a formal listing petition for long-tailed macaques to the FWS more than 250 days ago. Federal regulations say a review should take no more than 90 days.

Please TAKE ACTION below and join PETA in urging DOI to ban imports of long-tailed macaques and require FWS to initiate its own status review of long-tailed macaques immediately.

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Bivan
Patnaik
Department of the Interior

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