Monkey menace continues to bother lakhs of farmers in the coastal belt with no takers for seven-year-old proposal of the Forest Department on setting up a rescue and sterilisation centre for monkeys near Karkala.
Mangaluru Circle of the Forest Department had sent the proposal to the government in late 2010 after studying such centres in Himachal Pradesh.
Farmers who had prominently pressed for the monkey park during a protest in the city in August 2016, renewed their demand at a meeting with new Deputy Commissioner of Dakshina Kannada Sasikanth Senthil S. here recently.
Monkeys damaged coconut, arecanut, banana and coca extensively in the coastal belt. The damage is worth crores of rupees but the Forest Department has no provision for awarding compensation to the coconut and arecanut loss caused by monkeys. The Forest Department had mooted that the centre on a 10-acre reserve forest at Parpalgudde, near Karkala. This, the department said, will help farmers as different methods used by them to keep the simians away have not borne any fruit.
Before mooting the proposal, a team comprising forest officials and farmers visited Himachal Pradesh in August 2010 to study how such centres functioned there.
The team comprised an Assistant Conservator of Forests (ACF), three Range Forest Officers (RFOs) and four farmers representing Bharatiya Kisan Sangha (BKS). The objective of the centre is to control monkey population.
A forest official, who was part of the team, told The Hindu that it had been proposed to station ambulances in Puttur, Moodbidri, Udupi and Mangaluru to catch monkeys and transport them to the sterilisation centre. As no one is pushing the proposal forward, it was lying idle with the government, with farmers continuing to be at the receiving end, he said.
When the team visited Himachal Pradesh, that State had three rescue and sterilisation centres. It had set up the centres to check monkey menace mainly in apple plantations. It set up the rescue and sterilisation centres after its monkey park on 90 acres failed in 2000.
Animal compassion would be borne in mind while sterilising monkeys. Pregnant monkeys and those that had not reproduced even once would be excluded from sterilisation, he said.
