Monkey pack flees wildlife preserve

LAKELAND — A dozen monkeys that escaped from a wildlife preserve during the weekend have all the ingredients to start a successful colony in the wild, including mature males, reproducing females and a dominant troop leader.

The people-shy patas monkeys have thousands of acres of sod and ranch land to roam in northern Polk County, even the sprawling 870 square miles of the Green Swamp if they get that far. And they are among the fastest of primates, clocked at up to 35 mph.

But success in the wild for this group means avoiding unfamiliar predators and search parties. So don’t look for this colony to follow the lead of rhesus monkeys that escaped captivity and have been living in the wild around Silver Springs since the 1930s.

Still, the question remains how the Polk County pack got to this point.

Their keepers never thought the patases would brave the dark waters of an 8-foot-deep, 60-foot-wide moat around their 1-acre island preserve north of Lakeland. But they did. Every last one of them went into the drink and over a wall.

That doesn’t surprise Mark Wilson, a veterinarian who runs the Florida Teaching Zoo in Bushnell and who imports patas monkeys for placement in preserves and zoos.
He imported these patases, captured from Puerto Rico, and had them placed at the Safari Wild preserve in Polk County. Safari Wild is new, scheduled to open in 2009.
Its co-owner is Lex Salisbury, president of Tampa’s renowned Lowry Park Zoo.

The moat might work for captive-born monkeys, Wilson said, but wild ones don’t see water as a danger.

“They have their wild instincts intact,” Wilson said. “It probably never occurred to them not to swim out.”

He added, “They probably looked over the fence and said, ‘Hmmm, this is home.’ They are wild. They know how to forage for food and they know how to avoid predators.”

Said Salisbury, “That amazed me.”

A group of patases in Naples has lived on one side of a moat for decades, never venturing into the water, Salisbury said.

The same is true for colonies in European zoos, he said.

“I guess these guys living in Puerto Rico learned how to swim.”

When captured, they will be put into a more secure enclosure, off the island. “One strike and you’re out,” Salisbury said.

Search parties were still having a tough go of it this afternoon, but the dragnet around the colony was tightening.

They were spotted by sod farmer Robert Walker, out checking his fields.

“One of them sat in that tree for a long time,” Walker said. The monkey “had a little funny face, just starting at me ’cause I kept that truck running.

“Next thing I know there’s monkeys coming out of that tree everywhere. They went in them pine trees, then a helicopter come over and then they went in that tree yonder.”

Now, Salisbury knows his primates’ general vicinity. He said news helicopters scared the primates and they split into three groups. Still, they are in the same area, except for a lone male who lit out for points north.

He was spotted in a backyard — of a wildlife officer’s home, Salisbury said.

“He’s hungry,” Salisbury said, “and we have already started putting out bait for him.”

That’s how he plans to capture all the monkeys, though it may take a week or more.

Trappers will place bananas and sweet potatoes near where the escapees are holed up. Once the monkeys get used to chow time at the same spot for a few days, a trap will be sprung. The keepers hope for a group capture.

Wilson, the veterinarian, said it will be tougher than it sounds: These monkeys are accustomed to pineapples and pine nuts and food they find in the wild.

This colony was taken from the wilds of Puerto Rico, where their numbers have grown rapidly, and they faced euthanasia. Wilson’s group intervened and brought them to the preserve. The monkeys arrived as a group Thursday, and after two days of reconnaissance, they left as a group, led by a female with a baby on her back.

“They’re very social,” Salisbury said.

Originally from Central Africa, they can live in a wide variety of climates, including, apparently, subtropical Florida.

No primates are native to Florida, but several populations of Asian rhesus moneys have adapted in the wild, including monkeys living along the Silver River near Ocala. Described as the nation’s only free-roaming monkey population, the colony is traced by some to “Tarzan” movies filmed in the area and by others to a tourist boat attraction.

The Polk County escape was reported to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, which is investigating. Commission spokesman Gary Morse said all the permits and documentation for Safari Wild are in order and the moat constituted proper confinement.

The monkeys carry no diseases, their keepers said, and each has a microchip implanted for identification.

Wildlife officers are monitoring the recovery efforts but not taking part in the hunt.

“If the monkeys were a threat,” Morse said, “we would be out there, but they are not. The less of a disturbance we have out there, the better the odds that we will get these things captured.”

KEITH MORELLI is a staff writer for The Tampa Tribune