Staff Reporter
GUWAHATI: The monkey menace in Assam should no longer remain a monkey business. The monkey menace in towns and villages in the state is going out of control. Gauging the gravity of the situation, the state Environment and Forest Department will take a team of six MLAs from the state to Himachal Pradesh to study ways and means of tackling the menace. Himachal Pradesh is known for scripting a success story in tackling the monkey menace.
The last budget session of Assam had a detailed discussion on the monkey menace in the state. The Forest Department followed the discussion and held a separate meeting with the MLAs of LACs affected by monkeys.
Himachal Pradesh was the worst-affected state in India due to the monkey menace. In 2007, Himachal Pradesh started various programmes, including the sterilisation of monkeys. They sterilised around one lakh monkeys. The team of MLAs from Assam is heading for Himachal Pradesh to study measures adopted to address the monkey menace.
Assam has no official census to ascertain monkey population, even as the state has various monkey species. The various monkey species found in Assam, especially Rhesus macaque and cap monkey, are infamous for destroying agricultural and horticultural cultivation in the state. In urban areas, monkeys create havoc in different ways. They even break into homes in search of food, in addition to destroying household orchards. Some monkeys even terrorise humans, especially women.
A section of people from Uriya Gaon, Difalu and Barhampur in the Nagaon district said that the farmers in their areas have stopped vegetable cultivation and horticulture because of the monkey menace. "Monkeys start havoc on rooftops of houses from the wee hours. Based on religious beliefs, we don't kill monkeys. We just try to drive them away with traditional methods. However, those traditional methods are no longer effective for them," a villager said.
According to a health official, the monkey menace is not restricted to the destruction of agricultural and horticultural plants. They even create health hazards. Aggressive monkeys often go berserk, bite humans and spread zoonotic diseases.
A forest official said, "Rapid destruction and urban expansion on forest hills continue to shrink the habitats of monkeys that keep their population growth intact. Based on religious beliefs, people often offer fruits like bananas in temples, and such gestures make them frequent such areas. It is time we did something tangible to arrest the menace."
At the request of the Forest Department, the Department of Parliamentary Affairs named six MLAs - Mrinal Saikia, Rupjyoti Kurmi, Dhiraj Goala, Prakash Das, Rupesh Gowala, and Mridul Dutta - for their visit to Himachal Pradesh to study measures taken in that state to tackle the monkey menace.
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