the __earthinc

I might be agreeable to the lifting of ban on the capture and export of macaques in Peninsular Malaysia. The lift of the ban — which was set in place in 1984 to combat the declining of the primate population — was announced by the Minister Azmi Khalid just last month:

PUTRAJAYA, Aug 17 (Bernama) — Malaysia has lifted the ban on the export of long-tailed macaques, better known as long-tailed monkeys, in an effort to reduce the population of these primates in urban areas, Natural Resources and Environment Minister Datuk Seri Azmi Khalid announced Friday. [Ministry Lifts Ban On Export Of Monkeys. Bernama. August 17 2007]

But I have a few questions and one of them concerns this:

He said the ministry had done a non-detrimental study before lifting the ban and it had been decided that only monkeys in urban areas be caught and exported. [Ministry Lifts Ban On Export Of Monkeys. Bernama. August 17 2007]

How does the authority plan to immediately ascertain the origin of any caged macaques at the gates of Peninsular Malaysia?

It seems that the ministry might face a problem known in economics as asymmetric information.

One solution to this problem is to randomly tag members of the macaque community with passive RFID, urban and wild. Done properly, a simple act of sampling will reasonably solve the problem. I will leave the question on the size of the tagging operation to real statisticians. My statistics skill is deteriorating after being out of college for too long.