The environment and forests ministry has agreed to finance various programmes being undertaken by the Himachal government to check the monkey menace in the state and upgrade the monkey sterilisation centre at Tutikandi in Shimla into a national-level training centre.
Himachal chief minister Prem Kumar Dhumal announced this on Sunday after receiving consent from the Centre in this regard. The state government had approached the Centre to help the state in checking the monkey menace by funding the projects the state had envisioned. Dhumal said several meetings were held by officials of the state government to apprise the Central authorities of the problem the state was facing due to the upheaval caused by monkeys.
The environment and forests ministry has now agreed to develop Tutikandi Centre into a national-level training centre for other state governments, the cost of which will be borne by the Centre. Keeping in view the explicit recognition of the expertise developed by Himachal in sterlisation of monkeys, a monkey sterilisation centre is also coming up at Una at a cost of Rs 1.90 crore.
The chief minister said financial assistance would be provided for development of research projects in the area of primatology, as well as monkey census operations, both of which were essential to devise a proper strategy for controlling the monkey problem. He said the Centre has also agreed to fund setting up of additional primate parks in the state on need basis of the local communities
Dhumal claimed that the state government had initiated various programmes aimed at controlling the increasing population of monkeys in the state, which had been hampering crop cultivation by farmers. He said in many areas, farmers had left their land holdings uncultivated due to fear of monkeys. He said various organisations of the farming community had been approaching him to find some solution to this problem.
He said the state government had even experimented with setting up of a park at Taradevi to create a natural habitat for the simians. He said sterilisation centres had been set up in Shimla, Hamirpur and Una districts to check the population growth of monkeys.