UNESCO Biosphere Reserves are supposed to be strictly protected ecosystems where conservation and sustainable use intersect. The Everglades in Florida is a biosphere reserve, as is wildlife-rich Amboseli National Park in Kenya, and Komodo National Park, the Indonesian island where the world’s only komodo dragons live. Can Gio, a mangrove forest near Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, is also a UNESCO biosphere reserve, home to king cobras, saltwater crocodiles, fishing cats—and until recently, a monkey circus.

Biosphere reserves should demonstrate a “balanced relationship” between humans and nature, but in the monkey circus, the macaques were dressed in children’s clothes and forced to ride bikes, walk tightropes, jump over flames, and more. Footage taken at one performance shows monkeys cowering