Despite a majority of farmers complaining and even leaving farming owing to the growing monkey menace in hills, there is a substantial decrease in the number of macaques and langurs (black-faced monkeys).
A report prepared by the Dehradun-based Wildlife Institute of India (WII) shows that overall there is a 26 per cent drop in the number compared to that released in 2015. Breakup wise a total of 1,10,481 macaques were reported in the state whereas this number was 1,46,423 in the 2015 estimation.
This means the monkey population alone has dropped by 25 per cent in the hill state. Similarly, 37,735 langurs were reported in the present estimation while there were 54,804 langurs during the 2015 count. This comes to a nearly 31 per cent drop in the number of langurs.
The report further states that the highest number of 6,857 macaques were recorded from the Haridwar forest division followed by Bageshwar, Dehradun, Tehri divisions. In contrast, the highest number of 3,219 langurs were recorded in the Corbett-Ramnagar area followed by Badrinath, Corbett-Kalagarh area, and Kedarnath divisions.
Chief wildlife warden Parag Madhukar Dhakate said the estimated numbers of macaques and langurs will help in framing a long-term strategy to check the man-monkey conflict.
“The decrease in numbers is owing to the sterilization that the forest department has been carrying out in its two facilities,” Dhakate said to News18, He claimed around 46,000 sterilisations have been done. Though an independent expert privy to the process said otherwise.
Those involved in farming also doubt the estimated numbers. Ratan Aswal, a farmer and highlander, said the numbers seemed different from reality. Aswal said many farmers were preferring to leave agricultural work due to the monkey menace and it was getting worse. “Then how come numbers have come down? What was the methodology?” he asked.
The forest department showed that 1,780 forest staff members were involved in counting macaques and langurs across 31 forest divisions in Uttarakhand during December 2021. The counting was carried out with technical support from WII.
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