The #1 source for news about monkeys and apes

["Adam Thorsell" <athorsell AT meditech.com>]

>From the Associated Press via The Boston Globe

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/306/world/Monkeys_terrorize_Indian_gover:.shtml

Monkeys terrorize Indian government workers, foreign visitors
By Andrew Wang, Associated Press, 11/2/2003 14:45

NEW DELHI (AP) In a capital city where cows roam the streets and elephants 
plod along in the bus lanes, it's no surprise to find government buildings 
overrun with monkeys.

But the officials who work there are fed up. They've been bitten, robbed and 
otherwise tormented by monkeys that ransack files, bring down power lines, 
screech at visitors and bang on office windows.

The Supreme Court has stepped in, decreeing that New Delhi should be a 
monkey-free city after citizens filed a lawsuit demanding protection from the 
animals.

Easier said than done. A past initiative to scare off the army of Rhesus 
macaques with ultrahigh frequency loudspeakers didn't work. A plan to deport 
them to distant regions has stalled because local governments refused to have 
them.

There's an ape patrol of fierce-looking primates called langurs, led about on 
leashes by keepers. But whenever a langur looms, the pink-faced, 
two-foot-tall hooligans simply move elsewhere on government grounds.

''Please do not feed the monkeys,'' implores a sign at Raisina Hill, the 
complex of colonnaded buildings that includes the president's residence, 
Parliament, and Cabinet offices.

To no avail. Hindus believe that monkeys are manifestations of the monkey 
god, Hanuman, and worshippers come to Raisina Hill every Tuesday handing out 
bananas.

Last year the monkeys made their presence felt by hanging from window ledges 
and screeching at reporters arriving for a news conference with visiting U.S. 
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

''It's a big problem, especially in the evening,'' says Defense Ministry 
spokesman Amitabha Chakrabarti. Monkeys break into offices at night and paw 
through the files looking for food, he said. ''Those who work late hours have 
to be careful when it is dark.''

The city estimates at least 1,500 of New Delhi's more than 5,000 macaques 
live on Raisina Hill.

In the latest effort, a monkey relocation initiative, 400 monkeys have been 
caught at Raisina Hill in the past year and moved to a holding area on the 
outskirts of New Delhi to await their return to forests in neighboring 
states, said Madan Thapliyal, a municipality spokesman.

But governments of those states have so far refused to take the furry exiles, 
saying they have more than enough of their own.

Maneka Gandhi, daughter-in-law of the late Indian leader Indira Gandhi and an 
independent lawmaker in the lower house of India's Parliament, believes the 
monkeys should be left in peace.

Gandhi, an animal rights advocate, has already managed to halt a New Delhi 
program to spay and neuter stray dogs, saying it was cruel.

She claims that captured macaques, despite their holiness to Hindus, have 
been given to laboratories for experimentation or have died in their holding 
area cages. They were ''relocated to monkey heaven,'' she said.

The government says more than 200 monkeys have been relocated to Gandhi's 
parliamentary district about 125 miles east of New Delhi. Gandhi denies it. 
''It's all rubbish,'' she said. ''Not one monkey has been relocated to my 
constituency.''

Atul K. Gupta, of the Wildlife Institute of India, says macaques belong in 
forests, but deforestation and human settlement are driving them into cities 
in search of food.

Macaques are crafty pickpockets, know how to open refrigerators, and brazenly 
snatch lunch pails from government workers, he said. ''They have learned the 
tricks of finding food in an urban environment.''

The answer, he said, is to save the forests. Otherwise, he says, ''the 
problem will get worse.''




Adam Thorsell, Senior Programmer/Analyst, 781-774-3174
Medical Information Technology, Inc.
Mailstop: C3E22W, MEDITECH Circle, Westwood, MA  02090