Lack of asian primates in AZA Zoos

I created this thread to discuss the lack of asian primates in AZA zoos. It’s seems that many species are missing and only a handful are widespread. Out of all the gibbons only siamang, white handed, and white checked seem to be widespread. whereas in europe many more are present. Only the francois langur seems to be wide spread and silver leaf langurs at the columbus zoo are the only other langurs I can think of being kept at an AZA zoo. The only macaques that are widespread in the AZA are japanese macaques. Besides the lion tailed at animal kingdom and the crab eating macaques at indianapolis these seem to be the only species present. Of course both orangutan species are widespread due to their popularity. If anyone knows of any other species kept please share. Thanks

 

Aren't there Javan langurs at the Lisbon zoo? At least the zoo's website says the institution keeps those.

 

Lisbon Zoo isn't an AZA facility.


Several Asian primate species - especially macaques - are being phased out of AZA facilities. AZA facilities strive to have large, genetically diverse populations that serve as captive backbones for their wild counterparts. There isn't enough room in AZA facilities to have dozens of species as well as genetically diverse populations.

 

Oh, ok. Thanks for telling me!

 

Take that with a grain of salt. That is just a somewhat-educated guess.

 

You are correct. Many Asian primates were never well established here to begin with anyway. Douc langurs and proboscis monkey for example.

 

Memphis Zoo has Sulawesi black macaques, but IIRC they are being phased out of AZA zoos.

 

They are, yeah.

 

Yet the Douc langur foundation conservation programe is based in the US, the founder is American and the project was inspired by a professor seeing the species in San Francisco zoo in the 70's.