Catch a monkey and pocket the Rs 500 incentive from the Himachal Pradesh government. After all, it isn’t that the people alone who would gain. So vexed is the simian menace in the hill state that the authorities have set the target: seize 200,000 of the primates in the next eight months.
Fed up with monkeys destroying crops in the countryside and attacking people, including tourists, in urban areas, this is one programme the government thought would enable it to tackle the issue, an official spokesman said on Wednesday.
Of course, the trapped creatures would be treated humanely. The state cabinet, which met here last night, decided to set up 25 monkey sterilisation centres with state-of-the-art equipment.
These will be manned by trained people. The aim: sterilise 200,000 monkeys by June next year.
The participation, it is envisaged, would come from not just the general public. The forest guards would also be given incentives to capture monkeys and hand them over to authorities.
The scheme will be carried out under the control of the wildlife wing of the state’s forest department, the spokesman told Business Standard.
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The rugged state has over 300,000 monkeys. As a species, they have become a big nuisance, especially at popular tourist destinations like the capital Shimla.
The problem is so huge that this has now become a political issue, particularly when urban monkeys are released into the countryside, letting these fearless animals destroy standing crops.
A survey the state carried out said a huge number of farmers had been forced to abandon farming because of a growing number of incidents of monkeys eating harvest stuff.
The victims have for long been demanding even the right to shoot them down.