Himachal News- Promotion of fruit plants plantation to control monkey menace: Maneka Gandhi

Dharamsala, October 7, 2013: In view of the monkey menace in the urban localities in Himachal Pradesh the state government should come forward with a contingency plan to plant fruit trees on the forest land and even in the dense forests in order to provide eating material to the monkeys in the forests to avoid their attack on the crops in the urban areas.

This was stated today by the former minister and animal rights activist Maneka Gandhi here on Sunday, during her visit to Tibetan Charity Animal Care Section, Tengal Board, near Dal Lake at McLeodganj. She said that as the forests  in the state had mostly pine trees the monkeys have nothing to eat in these forest areas and were forced to come to the urban and rural populated localities and destroy different types of crops. If state government was interested fruit plants plantation in forest monkey menace could be controlled.

She said that monkeys need eatable to sustain their lives and in view of the scarcity of the eatables in the forest, which had been their board, they were forced to damage the public property. She had been on a personal visit to Chauntra in Mandi district yesterday and today visited McLeodganj.

She said that if peeped into the past the population of monkeys was in crores but now it had reduced to four lakhs and monkey menace was widely in lime light. She said that this menace had cropped up following squeezing of the green areas and plantation of pine trees in abundance in the forests. www.cityairnews.com