Black-crested macaques are quite possibly my favorite type of monkey — even though this guy swatted me in the head a split second after I took this photo. They are listed on the IUCN Red List (International Union For Conservation of Nature) as critically endangered, which is the final category before extinction. They live only on the northern tip of the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia and are the reason I set aside a couple of days and made the effort to visit Sulawesi and Tangkoko National Park. The island isn’t visited by very many tourists and those who do go are usually there for the scuba diving. Despite conservation efforts, their numbers have been in steady decline due to hunting for bush meat and habitat destruction. I saw this first hand as we followed a group of the macaques for several hours and ended up in a section of the forest recently burned illegall, by local farmers to clear the way for planting. Much more on these guys to come.