Simian menace — an unending saga of farmers’ woes

Rajesh Kumar

Human incursion and cupidity that manifestly reduced tree cover in the forests forced simians to leave their habitat and come near human habitations in their quest for food and new homes. 

Driven by the religious sentiment we started feeding the visitors with Gur and Chana to appeasing “Hanuman”, never realising that this one small step would spell doom for the farming community one day. Our shortsightedness in foreseeing serious fallout of our religious generosity towards animals has proved disastrous.

Today the situation has come to such a pass, that they find bread crumbs more palatable than the usual jungle savouries, which once constituted their natural food and just refuse to budge from their new-found homes on roadsides. The problem which was once a nuisance has metamorphosed into a literal menace today due to sheer human negligence. Increased man-animal conflicts – progenitor of all secondary issues like crop destruction, attacks on man et al we are faced up with today – are far from being contained given the inefficacy of the measures taken in the regard, thus far, which have not yielded on expected lines.

Why scientific culling never took off

Administration has always cited ‘religious belief’ associated with their killing as biggest impediment behind their inability to undertaking culling. If it was in clear perception of public sentiment ab initio, why the farcical enactment of the epic drama that unfolded in subsequent years?

Forest Department’s 2010-11 decision to issue gun licences to farmers to undertaking killing on their own could only be a figment of ill-conceived strategy on the part of experts, who perhaps expected poor farmers to first purchase guns with their meagre resources and then become sharp shooters without any formal arms handling training. Its half-heartedness came to the fore in 2015, when despite constitution of a special task force to executing the task in 38 Tehsils and Sub Tehsils, culling never took off.

Second, government approaching the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) in September 2014 seeking permission to declare them ‘vermins’ under Section 62 of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, and upon formal grant of permission, its failure to undertaking culling yet again in April 2016, further exemplify that the administration has always prevaricated on the issue to avoiding public ire.

Why sterilisation hasn’t yielded results

Had it been the right approach, there would have been definitive positive results on the ground today. Sadly, there are none despite the programme being in place since past 10 years. The hard fact that despite having spent crores and achieving a record 35 per cent decrease in their population from 3,17,512 in 2004 to 2,07,614 in 2015 (official figures), no corresponding reprieve to farmers in the form of lessened magnitude of the menace is palpable on the ground from any part of the state, testifies it.

It also implies that simian population has no direct bearing on the quantum of misery the animals would unleash on man for even 2-3 monkeys are enough to inflict significant damage on to him, when denied food which they must have even if it meant by snatching or biting those offering resistance, for it being their natural instinct, whereas, alternatively, even a full herd of 15-20 monkeys while in jungle may never pose any potential threat to his being as direct confrontation between two is most unlikely then. Perhaps that is why any increase or decrease in their population which was a natural process going on at its own pace in the forests, never mattered to man so long did he never come in direct confrontation with the animal as was the case three decades ago. Problems cropped up once the direct interaction between the two increased.

The bigger question then is why are we channeling our energies in controlling their population instead and not on reducing the direct interaction between the two, which in fact is the root cause of the problem? It is time the programme is reviewed and the root cause so identified is acknowledged officially and worked upon diligently for the sake of very farmers, who have abandoned their cultivable lands for the fear of crop destruction by animals and have no alternate means of sustaining life. Ten years is too long a period for experimentation.

A wider programme under the rubric of ‘Simian Population Management Programme’ (SPMP) could be put in place with specific attention paid to their rehabilitation in their natural homes – the forests – which must have enough natural food for animals. Sterilisation programme could be implemented only in conjunction with it, not singly, and that also only for some time till desired behavioural changes in the simians didn’t manifest, say a period of 4-5 years.

Rehabilitate them in their habitat 

• Launch anti-monkey feeding campaign vigorously: Shunning religious sentiment attached with the practice becomes a prerequisite. Simians are not going to starve to death if we stopped feeding them. In fact, they were never dependent on us a few decades back, but rely heavily today for major part of their daily food requirements. We need to exploit this weakness of theirs. Firm denial of food coupled with re-infused ‘human fear factor’ is most likely to bring in desired behavioural change, which may compel them to take recourse to forests sooner or later.
• Put in place anti-monkey feeding legislation: The prohibition of simian feeding bill could be introduced and passed in the state Assembly through political consensus with provisions for punitive action in the form of heavy penalties or even jail. The inherent idea behind the proposed legislation is to put in place a ‘stringent deterrent’, which may desist people from feeding them. Strict warning signage could be displayed along roadsides to desist tourists, particularly Hanuman bhakts, who come, feed them and just vanish leaving a basket full of problems for state farmers to grapple with.
• Permit monkey export: As a contingency measure to arrest their immediate propagation till the overall situation doesn’t come under some reasonable control and also in the wake of N-E states declining Himachal Government’s offer of allowing the translocation of simians to their forests, the option seems logical.