Why is Britain banishing Barbary macaques to a safari park in Scotland?

Centuries later, books may be written about the small band of 30 who were summarily plucked from their homeland and shipped off across the waters in 2014 for the most piffling of crimes, some for loitering with intent or snatching, by an unfeeling British government. Their plight is not unlike that of the 759 souls who were transported in Botany Bay in 1788 by the British authorities, who thought at the time that a nuisance deported is a nuisance solved. The sad corollary, of course, is that there is little chance of this group proliferating in a foreign land and creating a new nation as the convicts did in Australia, as they are tailless macaques. And for that same reason, whether the severity of their crimes warranted such banishment, and their thoughts on their summary fate, will also never be known.

Worst of all, by this sorry turn of events, these Barbary macaques, extradited from their habitat in the British territory of Gibraltar to a safari park in Scotland, will also lose their unique status as members of the only band of free primates in Europe other than human beings. Some thought must be given to whether any transgressions can be deemed so serious as to merit their being stripped of their special standing? Moreover, surely Britain has enough Burberry apes already not to need a consignment of Barbary ones?