Most of the last of two troops, totalling nearly 70 monkeys, were given a new lease of life when the Riverside Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre (RWRC) found them a new home on private land about 40 kilometres (25 miles) north east of Pretoria, on what is to be the Dikoneng Big Five Nature Reserve.

"These animals have been in Pretoria for centuries," said RWRC primatologist Bob Venter, adding that the city's Apies (Monkeys) River was named for the vervets that traversed the area.

Only 13 managed to evade capture by conservationists.

Hesitant at first, one by one the monkeys scampered off into an enclosed section of veldt, which had been used to acclimatise them to the food and habitat on the farm.

Venter, cupping his hands together over his mouth made a deep trilling sound to lure the monkeys over a makeshift bridge which will lead them into their new 15,000 hectare (37,000 acres) home.

"One will come over first to check if the area is safe and clear. The juveniles are first because the big guys need to protect the troop," said Matthew, Venter's son, also from RWRC.

He said an organisation called 'Friends of the Vervet Monkey' had been feeding the troops in Pretoria for about 10 years as their natural diet waned, and decided the situation was not going to improve, and they needed to find them a new home.

"These animals deserve to have a nice and natural wild environment," he told AFP.

Marelize Boshoff said she and her husband jumped at the opportunity to host the animals on their property, which they are converting into a game farm.

"We didn't even hesitate when they contacted us," she said. The small primates used to occur across Africa up to Ethiopia, and numbers have drastically declined in north Africa where birth rate has reached 0.3 percent.

"It is the last of a specific animal that does seed distribution. Not only are we losing a monkey but we are losing the biggest ecologist on the planet. This will lead to a decline in bird life, micro fauna and small insects," said Bob Venter. Despite several attempts at a census, primatologists have established only a notable drop in numbers but are unable to say how many are left in South Africa.

Research has shown the numbers are dropping by 10 percent a year, which could see the monkey extinct by 2020.

Venter said the monkey was classified as vermin in South Africa after biting the daughter of the country's finance minister in 1937, and was listed as a threatened species in 1976 by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

"South Africa is a signatory to that convention, but people still kill them. Old ways die hard."

Venter said research by his team in the Limpopo province has found the monkeys use 75 'words' to communicate in specific situations.

Easily distinguished by their golden backs, grey limbs, a black face, and red and blue genitals, vervets have complex troop hierarchies and are also the only animal species that do not have any divergence in their genetics.

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Riverside Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre
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