June 13, 2025
DEHRADUN – The Uttarakhand Forest Department will sterilize 40,000 monkeys to check their growing population in the next one year mainly due to crop losses incurred by the farmers in the state owing to rising simian attacks on agricultural fields.
Forest Department officials shared this information in the annual state wildlife board meeting chaired by the Chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami in Dehradun.
Sharing the plans, state wildlife division officials informed the board that the department has set a target of sterlising 40,000 monkeys in the next one years.
They informed that the decision was taken as the monkey population in the state is rising sharply resulting in their venturing out in agricultural fields. According to the officials, large areas of standing crops across the state are destroyed in monkey attacks.
The sterilisation target of 40,000 new monkeys is in addition to more than 75 thousand already castrated by the Uttarakhand forest department in the last three years since 2022. The new sterilisation drive against the monkeys will be taken up simultaneously in 27 forest divisions of the state.
It was also informed that since the last state wildlife board meeting, the National Wildlife Board has given its consent to 22 developmental projects of Uttarakhand to be taken up in the forest areas of the state. Officials informed the board that projects to develop four new eco tourism zones were started in the year 2024 in accordance with the directions of the Chief Minister.
Besides these decisions, the state wildlife board ratified 25 new development projects proposed in the reserved and protected forest covers of the state. These proposals will not be sent to the National Wildlife Board for its consent.