Tamil Nadu - Salem   

Only the fittest survive here

Special Correspondent

Nearly 3,000 monkeys have to feed on eatables thrown at them by tourists

WAITING FOR TOURISTS: A regular sight on the Yercaud Ghat Road. Photo: P. Goutham

SALEM: It is a painful survival for the monkeys in Yercaud as they struggle for food and water. Too many have to share very little.

Hundreds of these monkeys (Indian Macaque) have made the bush trees near the parapet wall of the Yercaud ghat road their permanent habitation surviving sadly on the throwaway food items from the tourists who use the road to reach the hill station. Little pools of water in rocks and crevices are their inadequate sources.

The ghat road offers them neither the natural food nor adequate water. Short shrubs, barren trees and coffee plants just ensure little shades from the scorching sun. A few Good Samaritans occasionally turn up to bring water in sachets particularly when the sun is at its cruel best. In the rat race for food, many have lost their lives, knocked down by speeding vehicles from which the eatables are thrown.

A senior forest official claims that these monkeys are the recent habitants encroaching upon the ghat section. The nearby local bodies trapped them and left them here.

"Thus they have been relocated. Now the Yercaud ghat road has become a major habitation for about 3,000 of them. The population is ever growing," he says. Whenever they feel the pressure, in frustration, they descend on the residential localities at the foothill.

To prevent such intrusions into human habitations in future and to restrain them in the hill section in the best interest of their security, a group of animal lovers, Asokar Pasumai Illam Tree Growers Seva Centre, here, planted about 50 cherry fruit saplings along the ghat road. These cherry trees, they claim, would grow fast and yield abundant fruits. After the plantation they also distributed plantains, fried rice, `murukku' and other eatables to these animals.

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