Human-wildlife conflict occurs when people and wildlife compete with one another over space, food or other resources (Clayton & Meyers, 2009). Conflict or significant threats from wildlife can reduce feelings of empathy and sympathy for wildlife, resulting in drastic actions like culling.
There are 3 types of human-animal relationships (Clayton & Meyers, 2009):
- Mutualistic: Both parties benefit from the relationship
- Parasitic: One party benefits while the other suffers
- Commensal: One party benefits without harming or benefiting the other party
There are cases of mutualistic relationships with long-tailed macaques where they are seen as a source of revenue or good fortune, and thus are culturally and religiously important (Gumert, 2011).
In Singapore, we generally have a commensal relationship with the long-tailed macaques whereby they don’t really hurt us, but benefit from the food that they gain from people. However, 68.3% of residents living near nature reserves and 24.4% of visitors who participated in a study reported that they had experiences with ‘nuisance’ macaques (Sha et al., 2009b), indicating that a parasitic relationship exists in certain situations. Examples of such occurrences would include the very rare cases where monkeys attack people. Habitat alteration and culling can also have negative impacts on macaques (Gumert, 2011).