著者

三戸 幸久

出版者

「野生生物と社会」学会

雑誌

野生生物保護 (ISSN:13418777)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.1, no.3, pp.111-126, 1995

参考文献数

53

被引用文献数

1

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From the mid-1800s to around 1950, the Japanese monkey (<i>Macaca fuscata</i>) was rarely seen by humans, because this animal had decreased greatly due to being harvested as a natural resource. After 1950, however, wild monkey parks were opened one after another, contributing to the local economy, nature-education of the general public, conservation of monkeys, reduction of crop damages and scientific studies. In 1972, there were 35 parks in total. But from thereon, the number of parks started to decrease again, which was caused by various problems, such as an increase in the running cost, decrease in the number of visitors and poor sanitary conditions. A steady rise in the number of wild monkeys also caused an increase in damages to crops and human dwellings. Important recommendations by naturalists, scientists and nature conservationists for improving the situation of the parks in regard to educational, scientific and nature conservation aspects have been ignored by commercial and administrative authorities. Nevertheless, efforts to improve the situation continued because of the overpopulation of park monkeys and the serious damages caused by them. As a possible solution to this problem it was suggested recently to return the animals to their natural habitat by gradually decreasing and then completely stopping their support, slowly integrating them into the ecosystem again, thereby contributing to public education and nature conservation in cooperation with local museums of natural history.