Source : R&PG News, India, 08 Apr '07
By : Baldev S. Chauhan
  

'We have sterilised 621 monkeys using the latest laser techniques and now plan to operate on 65,000 monkeys in urban areas of the state,' said Ram Lal Thakur, Himachal Pradesh forest minister.

However, no timeframe has been set for reaching the target. The plan follows the pressure exerted by farmers in recent months to take steps to sterilise and export monkeys who are destroying their crops across the hill state.

The state government has ruled out exporting monkeys as it had briefly done in the 1970s, but is seriously planning to limit their numbers by sterilising them now.

Even the culling of these animals may not be carried out as was planned some months back as it could stir up religious feelings, officials said, not wishing to be named.

'Both females and males have been successfully sterilised at Shimla and the cost of each operation is Rs.350 per simian,' Thakur said here Thursday.

The central and state governments are jointly funding the project, said officials.

After the operation the monkeys are kept under observation for five days and then released at places from where they were captured. They are also marked to ensure they are not captured again by the mobile vans.

The state government is training veterinarians and plans to soon start two more sterilising centres at Gopalpur in Kangra district and at Sundernagar in Mandi district.

Mass sterilisation of monkeys is taking place for the first time in the country, claim veterinarians here. Malaysia is only country to have done it so far.

'According to the latest figures available, there are 319,188 monkeys in the entire state of which some 65,000 are found in urban areas,' said officials.

Some 5,000 monkeys are reportedly found on the busy 88 km Kalka-Shimla highway, often posing hazards for speeding vehicles on this mountainous road.

Troupes of monkeys roam the towns, including Shimla, often launching attacks on tourists and locals carrying eatables.

The Himachal high court here had rapped the state government a couple of years back for not doing enough to contain the menace.

This led civic officials to translocate around 3,400 monkeys from Shimla, Kalka-Shimla highway and Rampur Bushahr town, including 1,900 from Shimla alone.

Barely had the residents and tourists heaved a sigh of relief, farmers raised an outcry saying the urban monkeys had shifted to the countryside and were damaging crops.

A Himachal Gyan Vigyan Samiti -, a NGO, has been most vocal about the large-scale damage to standing crops by monkeys and other wildlife animals.

Thousands of activists and farmers gathered outside the state legislative assembly earlier this week urging the government to take immediate steps to check the monkey menace.

'There has been an alarming rise in the number of monkeys in the last 25 years. From just 60,000 simians in 1980, the number rose to 115,000 in 1990, and has now touched a whopping 319,188,' said Kuldeep Tanwar, HGVS chief.

'Besides monkeys other wild animals including wild boars, parrots, porcupines, rabbits among others destroy over Rs.2 billion worth of standing crops each year according to state government estimates. But we feel the damage is double -,' Tanwar told IANS.

'In fact, according to our activists, some 2,319 panchayats - of a total of 3,243 panchayats in the hill state are affected by the wild animal menace,' said Tanwar.