Al-Marsad Newspaper: The writer, Dr. Badr bin Saud, commented on the Ministry of Environment’s use of a British expert to head the scientific team for the program to assess the harms of baboons in the Kingdom.
Brutal ways
Badr bin Saud said, in his article entitled “Kill them,” published in the newspaper “Okaz”: “The Saudi Ministry of Environment hired a British expert, her name is Paula Peepsworth, and this expert heads the scientific team for the program to assess the harms of baboons in the Kingdom, and she said, a while ago, That the citizens bear responsibility for feeding these monkeys, and this opinion was attached to by the employees of the Saudi Wildlife Conservation Center, and they began to repeat it on various occasions as if it were a sequence of a Mexican series, and the truth is that stopping feeding the monkeys at this stage, and after they got used to it for many years, will double their attacks on Farms, homes and people, and it will exacerbate the problem and will not solve it, and the evidence is what the Australian camels did, nearly four years ago, when the forests burned and water and food became scarce, and how they stormed the homes and farms of Australians in brutal ways, and took their share of what they were able to reach.
Al-Mazayen and the camel
He pointed out: “The Australian government, at that time, did not stop much at animal rights, and issued a decision to get rid of thousands of camels every year, by shooting them from helicopters, in a way that achieves the preservation of biological balance, and the protection of farms, crops and vital water sources, and also reduces The methane gas that comes out of the excrement of camels and animals in general, and this gas causes global warming, and camels were brought by the British to Australia from India, Afghanistan and the Middle East, and some of them may have been eligible to participate in the auctions and camels inside the Kingdom.
baboons
He continued: “The Australian method is agreed upon by the majority of Saudi specialists, and they prefer to use it to reduce the numbers of baboons to what they were 50 years ago, in a way that neutralizes their aggressive behavior with citizens and tourists, and their tampering with tourist destinations in their places of intense presence in the southwest of the Kingdom, so that they may outperform their numbers.” On the numbers of park goers, and they do not come empty-handed, but rather they bring waste and leftovers with them and distort the place and confuse people, noting that the figure that is being relied upon, which is 330 thousand monkeys, dates back to an old census that took place in 1987, or 36 years ago, and it is likely that The current numbers are in the millions.
Logging and poaching
He pointed out: “The reasons for the expansion of the Hamadrias baboons are known, and perhaps the most prominent of them is the environmental confusion as a result of the scarcity of predators that depend on them in their diet, such as the Arabian leopard, hyenas, wolves, lynxes, and others, and the citizens complaining about the baboons, they used to poison and kill the predators in the past, in addition to grazing, logging, poaching, and expansion Agricultural and residential, and the establishment of main and mountain roads targeting the natural habitats of baboons, in addition to the fact that baboons are an ideal carrier of about 15 serious diseases, the most important of which is AIDS.
Chemical sterilization of monkeys
And he continued: “I do not tend to the solutions that are being studied about the chemical or surgical sterilization of monkeys, and I believe that killing is better, and His Eminence the former Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz bin Baz authorized the killing of the harmful monkey, or that the balance be restored by slaughtering them and providing them as meals for predators in reserves and zoos, or issued at prices.” Cheap for the countries you prefer as food.”