Minister for Forests, Ecology & Environment, Choudhary Lal Singh, today informed the Upper House that in Poonch, Barchar and other areas of Mandi tehsil monkey menace is during maize crop season. He said that the Wildlife Department has posted local staff in these areas to deal with the problem by using crackers, whenever any such report is received from the affected areas. Said staff rushes to the affected spot immediately to deal with the situation. People are being made aware of this menace by way of pamphlets, brochures, hoardings etc, he said.The Minister was replying to a Calling Attention Notice of MLC Dr. Shenaz Ganai in the today.Forest Minister informed that this is a typical problem prevalent in Jammu region due to highly mischievous nature of the monkeys in different habitations and the Government has constituted a Committee to suggest measures to deal with monkey menace.The committee submitted its report to the Government suggesting measures to deal with monkey menace.
Measures among other things include short term (capturing, translocation and subsequent release, changes in cropping pattern, awareness generation particularly for avoiding monkey feeding) and long term (habitat improvement by way of planting fruit trees in forest areas, castration of monkeys) measures to be implement over a period of ten years, the Minister added.The Department is also contemplating option of relocating monkeys from certain places of Kathua and Udhampur to some remote forest areas, the Minister informed.He said as a long term measure to overcome this menace, the Government is working on to improve the natural habitation of monkeys by planting fruit trees in forests, so that monkeys don’t move towards populated areas in search of food.