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Having kept the wildlife wing of the forest department in Himachal Pradesh on toes for years now, the marauding monkeys in Shimla, an international tourist destination, may not have a cool time anymore.
Although none in Shimla chose to shoot a monkey even after the wild animal was declared vermin with a permission for killing, the primates may still have to run for life with ‘monkey-watchers’ being deployed at some ‘hotspots’ in the city to shoo them away with a stick and a sling shot.
A monkey helpline is also in place to help out locals troubled by the wild animal in the city.
The ‘rowdy’ ones may ultimately land in the ‘free range’, being set up to keep the primates with arrangements of food.
The forest wing has identified around 14 hotspots in all in the city, where the monkeys roam in groups in routine. These are near the schools, the Mall, the medical college, Jakhu hill, etc.
“We have put the members of the eco-task force, mostly retired Army men, on the job to keep tabs on monkeys, as there are regular complaints of monkey attacks on humans in the city. The victims were mostly children, women and even tourists,”Chief Conservator Forests, Wild Life (South), PL Chauhan told The Statesman.
Chauhan said the monkey watchers would have a distinct jacket, with a monkey helpline number written on it.
Along with this, we have kept the target of sterilization of 3500 monkeys in Shimla and its surrounding areas, which would contain the numbers,” Chauhan said.
There are around 2500 monkeys in the Shimla municipality alone as per the 2015 census by the wild life wing.
The idea for monkey watchers was coined as the wild life wing’s experiment to scare away monkeys by using ultrasonic machines on different parts of the Mall in Shimla failed.
“The monkeys would avoid going to the area where machines were kept and shifted their base to other corners on the Mall,” an official said.
While there is much hullaballo in Shimla over monkey attacks it being the state capital and tourist destination, the primates and other wild animals have turned out to be a nuisance in the entire state. Together with other wild animals, they are estimated to be destroying crops worth over Rs.500 crore annually, according to Kisan Sabha in HP.
The population of monkeys in the hill state has, however, decreased from 3.14 lakh in 2013 to 2.70 lakh in 2015 due to continuous sterilization drive over the last decade.
The damage by the monkeys in the agriculture and horticulture farms in Himachal Pradesh has been quite high, forcing the farmers to abandon their fields.
Sensing the political overtones that the ‘monkey menace’ issue takes in the run up to the assembly polls in HP, the state government had recently got the monkeys declared as ‘vermin’ in Shimla municipality and 38 other tehsils in Himachal by the Government of India earlier this year with a permission for killing.
The government’s angle was that the people, who are incurring losses in agriculture due to monkeys or are attacked by the wild animal, can kill them in the notified area. But not a single person chose to kill a monkey for religious reasons.
– Archana Phull
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