CaribbeanSt Kitts & Nevis

Who wants to see some monkeys on St Kitts and Nevis?

By June 20, 2017 2 Comments
Nevis green back monkey

Nevis green back monkeys 2In the mountains of St Kitts and Nevis there live thousands upon thousands of green back monkeys. These monkeys were brought from Africa along with the slave trade in the mid 1600’s. It sounds really cool and was something I wanted to see. We planned to go back to a Golden Rock at 4pm because we were told they always come down to forage by that time.

Well it turns out we did not really need to make any special plans, because these suckers are everywhere. If fact we saw a troop of them when we left the Botanical Gardens, which is much lower in altitude then I was led to believe they came.

Nevis Monkey are a pestAs much as us tourist love to watch and photograph the monkeys, the locals think they are a pest due to them eating from the fruit trees and gardens. I have read accounts from the late 1690’s where people are already saying how much of a pest the monkeys are. In fact, if the numbers I heard are correct there are 4 monkeys to every citizen (over 200,000 monkeys to 55,000 people). Some of the monkeys are captured as infants and kept as pets and others are capture for medical research. In fact, if you have ever had a polio vaccination it apparently came for the monkeys on these two islands.

2 Comments

  • Shane says:

    Gerald,

    Thank you for your readership. I appriciate it. I did not use a methodology to determine my number. I simple wrote the number I read and was told when I was on the islands. As far as I can figure thay live on the mountains.

    Shane

  • Gerald Browne says:

    I would like to inquire of your methodology to determine that there are 200,000 monkeys roaming around the islands of St. Kitts and Nevis! How long was your observation to determine your numbers? And where are these thousands of monkeys living?

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