Phidim, February 14

With the rise in the number of simians in rural areas of Panchthar and Ilam districts, their conflict with humans has gone up.

Measures are being sought to avoid man-monkey conflict.

Rural folks have started protecting wild roots for monkeys’ food in the forest and farmers have started changing their farming styles.

With the increasing number of monkeys in the forests of Sidin, Prangbung and Ilam’s Maimjhuwa, monkeys are giving a hard time to framers by destroying their crops.

To seek a solution to the beast-man conflict, Deep Jyoti Youth Club organised a three-day training to resolve the monkey-man conflict at Dawai Pani of Sidin VDC, Panchthar recently.

Participants at the training programme were informed that the conflict had deepened as food items for the beasts had shifted from the forest to the fields. A trainer asked the participants to protect wild roots, food items of the simians in the forest and distributed seeds of various wild roots to them.

As many as 95 members from Kanyadevi Community Forest Consumers’ Committee Sidin, Singhdevi Community Forest Consumers’ Committee Prangbung, and Ilam’s Maimjhuwa’s Laligurans Community Forest Users’ Committee had participated in the training programme.

Executive Director Sunil Bantawa of the club said that the training was focused on protecting the beasts’ foods in the forest and planting crops.

Bantawa said that human presence had destroyed the food items of the beasts in the forest causing them to move to the fields.

“Conflict between humans and monkeys breaks out when the latter start destroying crops,” Bantawa said, adding, “There is urgent need to take steps to control the strife.”