December 14th every year is designated as Monkey Day. Whenever you step out of your house, you must often see monkeys somewhere, they are constantly looking for food, eating food from garbage bins, and sometimes even seen snatching food, but in today’s era, monkeys also need environmental protection.
Monkeys in India face many conservation issues. Some of the 22 species of primates living in India are forced to live like humans, such as the rhesus monkey (the most common) and the gray langur (Semnopithecus entellus). Therefore, they search for food by raiding and robbing, so people sometimes drive them away or even kill them.
What harm happened to the monkey?
Rhesus macaques (common monkeys) are commonly found in cities like Delhi, Agra, Vadodara, Chandigarh, Lucknow and Varanasi where they often look for food in garbage bins and people feed them.
Karthik Satyanarayana, co-founder and CEO of WILDLIFE SOS, said monkeys have easy access to food found in dustbins and roads and they are forced to eat the same food, but these foods are not good for health unfavorable. Causes hormonal imbalances, increases stress and changes their behavior and reproductive patterns. This can often be called urban wildlife syndrome.
What challenges do monkeys face?
Forests are being cleared, causing monkeys to migrate to cities. Deprived of their natural home, monkeys have entered human settlements. Since monkeys are mostly wild animals, when they come to human cities, they will be trapped in telephone poles, barbed wires, nets, and even face the risk of vehicle accidents. As a result, many monkeys also died.
Every year, Wildlife SOS rescues hundreds of monkeys from Delhi, Agra and Vadodara. Geeta Seshamani, co-founder and secretary of Wildlife SOS, said this shows how critical the situation of the monkeys is and how much violations can affect the lives of these primates.
