The city of Lopburi has a monkey problem, and Thai wildlife officials have laid out a plan to bring peace after at a decade of human-monkey conflict.
The macaques that roam the Bankok, city of Lopburi are part of local culture, which is a major tourist draw, but years of dangerous encounters with residents and visitors have failed to bring peace to the situation. The monkeys try to snatch food from humans, which leads to tussles, scratches and other injuries.
Now, authorities want to round up at least 2,500 monkeys and place them in massive enclosures,
“I don’t want humans to have to hurt monkeys, and I don’t want monkeys to have to hurt humans,” said Athapol Charoenshunsa, the director-general of the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation.
An official monkey catching campaign was launched, which prioritized the more aggressive alpha males, and has caught 37 monkeys so far. Officials plan to capture the rest, once enclosures are completed. Macaques are classified as a protected species under Thailand’s wildlife conservation law, and some have blamed the city’s troubles on tourists and residents feeding the animals, which drew monkeys into the city and boosted their numbers. An effort to limit feeding made things worse, when officials fined feeding monkeys outside of a few designated areas around the tourist attractions, but the areas were dominated by a highly territorial creatures, and rival bands grew hungry and turned to harassing humans for food even more.
Athapol says the monkeys aren't the villains, as authorities have not been efficient in controlling the population and Thailand has 52 of its 77 provinces reporting problems from monkeys.