Caution: vervet babies crossing
No person, adult or child, should ever shoot monkeys with a pellet gun.
As we enter baby season, drivers are urged to decrease speed and drive with extra caution as pregnant vervet monkeys cross the road and one-year-olds play on the verges.
Steve Smit, 63, who founded Monkey Helpline in Westville with his partner Carol Booth, has dedicated his life to fighting for the rights of all animals and especially monkeys in KZN and South Africa, and can often be seen rescuing monkeys when cruelty rears its ugly head in Toti.
Steve started Monkey Helpline in 1995 as a project of Front for Animal Liberation and Conservation of Nature (Falcon). His involvement with a number of other wildlife conservation bodies led him to realise that vervets are among the most misunderstood, maligned and persecuted of wild animals and in desperate need of efforts to help and protect them. Monkey Helpline is now an autonomous organisation and a registered NPO, which has become Steve’s full-time, unpaid occupation to give his all to rescuing and rehabilitating vervets.
Born in Port Elizabeth, he grew up in Durban and Pretoria, and matriculated at Clapham High School in Pretoria. He completed 18 months national service with SAPS and completed a law matric at SAPS Training College in Pretoria, before becoming an intelligence officer from 1976 to 2001. Steve has three children – Jonathan, Kiron and Luke, and has been blessed with three grandchildren.
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“I have always been fascinated by the visual appeal of monkeys and their intelligent behaviour, and once I learnt about the terrible things people do to them, I knew that monkey protection and education would become a major aspect of my life. I soon realised that people fear what they do not understand and that we needed to do more to educate people.”
Most days they respond to three to five rescue calls, but this can increase to as many as 10, and a lot of their time is spent fielding calls from people opposing monkeys in ‘their’ living space. All their services are free-of-charge.
“We devote lots of our time to educating people about the reasons why the monkeys are here, why monkeys behave the way they do, the things people should do or not do when monkeys are around, and how to humanely keep monkeys away from unwelcome places. Knowing monkeys will not just randomly attack and bite people, and they don’t carry rabies, is often enough to change antagonism and fear into tolerance and appreciation.”
They also run a rescue operation and a ‘high care’ unit. “We rescue at least three to five vervets a day, and their injuries range from wounds sustained during fights with other monkeys, dog bites, being run over by vehicles, electrocution, being snared, trapped or poisoned, and shot with catapults and firearms and being injured on razor-wire.
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“Many are babies who are orphaned or injured when mothers are attacked by dogs or other monkeys, or are severely injured or killed in human-related incidents. On any given day we have at least 10, often more, monkeys in our high care unit. Once they have recovered these monkeys are, whenever possible, released back into their home territory or transferred to the Monkey Helpline Primate Rehabilitation and Sanctuary Centre in Camperdown where we care for over 200.”
Alarmingly, over 80 per cent rescued have air gun pellets lodged in their little bodies. Lead or steel air gun pellets cause terrible pain, suffering and a lingering death and no person, adult or child, should ever shoot monkeys with a pellet gun.
Steve is available to do rescues 24/7. The public can help with the amazing work they are doing by digging deep into their pockets and donating on their website www.monkeyhelpline.co.za/donate-here/ or donating R10 by SMSing MONKEY to 38021. Call Steve on 082-659-4711 or email steve@monkeyhelpline.co.za.
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