Primates as Economic Resources

Human communities have utilized primates as natural resources for millennia, and primates continue to contribute today to the livelihoods of human communities around the world. Primates are attractive animals that add value to temples and parks where they intermingle with humans, they can be captured and trained to carry out economically valuable activities, and they are often harvested as a natural resource. The commercialization of hunting in primate‐range regions around the world has made possible the rapid expansion of the trade in primates and primate‐derived products. Primatologists are now alarmed by the widespread trade of primates for bushmeat, medicinal use, and pets, supplied by the hunting of wild populations of primates. Primatologists study the economics of wildlife commerce to monitor the scale of the trade and understand the drivers of wildlife harvesting to propose policies mitigating unsustainable rates of harvest.