Macaques and other monkey species increasingly inhabit urban areas across Asia, creating conflicts with humans while facing welfare pressures from habitat loss, feeding dependence, and persecution.
Urban macaques exist in a welfare limbo. They are wild animals with complex social needs and behavioral repertoires, yet they live in human-modified environments where conflict is frequent and management responses often cause suffering. Trapping and relocation disrupts established social groups and typically fails to reduce conflict, as other individuals fill vacated ranges. Welfare-conscious coexistence requires understanding monkey behavior, reducing attractants, and finding the minimum necessary management to maintain human safety without causing disproportionate animal suffering.