India: Monkey Plague Keeps Politicians Busy

Monkeys in the house, monkeys in the clinic. Monkeys in the courtroom. Monkeys everywhere. In India, a monkey plague is increasingly getting out of hand. Even at the Supreme Court in the capital New Delhi, lawyers are throwing up their hands in despair: «By the time you have a plan, the monkeys will have taken control of Delhi,» the judges recently criticized the authorities.

A police officer at the Tis Hazari courthouse says he no longer dares to go up the stairs, ever since several of the ubiquitous rhesus monkeys — a type of macaque — made themselves at home there. «They’re spreading fear and terror among the lawyers and judges. It’s absolute chaos.»

Some residents of New Delhi tried to fight fire with fire by keeping langur monkeys to drive away the macaques. But since keeping these monkeys in captivity was banned, specialists have now had to step in: professional monkey callers imitate the shrill cries of langurs to scare off the rhesus monkeys.

Alarmingly Rapid Reproduction

Ravi Kumar, Delhi’s self-proclaimed monkey man, is one of them. He explains his non-violent — and religiously appropriate — solution to the monkey problem as follows: «We don’t like to hit or catch them — after all, they are the army of the god Hanuman.» Many Hindus venerate this monkey god. Monkeys are considered his descendants and are treated well and fed by many people.

More than 20,000 rhesus monkeys were relocated to a nature reserve on the outskirts of the city. But this has done little to help. The macaques are causing chaos in their new environment as well. The reserve is overcrowded, and the well-fed monkeys are reproducing at a rapid rate. They steal food, break into homes, and ransack shops.

Animals driven out of their habitats

The aggressive monkeys are just one aspect of the growing conflict between humans and nature in India. Rapid population growth in the 1.3-billion-inhabitant country and industrial development are pushing animals out of their traditional habitats: reports of tigers or leopards attacking livestock in villages are not uncommon. Elephants trample crops, and snakes make themselves at home in bathrooms.

Wildlife and the protection of forests have been sidelined in the course of economic development, says Arinita Sandilya of the wildlife conservation organization Wildlife SOS. This development comes at a high price: elephants and tigers kill approximately 500 people every year, according to Mayukh Chatterjee of the Wildlife Trust of India. Around 55,000 people die from snakebites annually.

Humans are to blame

At the same time, around one hundred elephants are killed every year. They are struck by trains or die in electric fences. Lynch mobs kill dozens of leopards. The big cats have been forced to make sugarcane plantations their new habitat. From wild boar to rodents, humans and animals seem to be clashing everywhere.

“We should restore the forests so that animals have enough to eat and space to live,” says veterinarian Suresh Chandra. “The solution lies in controlling our own actions. We humans are to blame.”