Delhi forest dept to advertise monkey census bid for 3rd time
NEW DELHI: The Delhi government’s forest department will come up with yet another proposal to hire an agency to conduct a census and sterilise over 25,000 monkeys in the national capital, after its two previous e-tenders failed to evoke a response, an official said on Monday.
“We plan to float a fresh tender again this week. In case this attempt also fails, the department plans to constitute a separate team to catch and release the monkeys itself, while it will also approach the municipal corporations to identify hospitals under their respective jurisdictions to perform the sterilisation in a phased basis,” a senior Delhi government official said. The steri- lised monkeys are to be released in the same area from where they were caught.
The department has funds of around ₹7 crore for the project.
The department had floated two e-tenders on June 29 and August 8 last year for the monkey census, their capture, sterilisation and post-sterilisation care. However, the proposals did not receive a single bid.
“The department had planned a census, as there is no official data on the city’s monkey population,” the official said.
The Delhi High Court (HC) had asked the forest for a status report on the project, the next hearing for which is due on March 7. The high court has been monitoring the department’s progress in the matter over the last year, to control the simian population in the city.
Most monkeys rescued from various parts of the city have been relocated to the Asola Wildlife Sanctuary, over the years.
Gauri Maulekhi, animal rights activist and member, management committee, National institute of Animal Welfare, said, “Sterilisation is not the solution to control the monkey population. Besides, there is no such agency in the country that has any expertise in this kind of exercise. Two such projects taken up in Himachal Pradesh and Agra have failed, as the number of monkeys did decrease after sterilisation, but the number of bites increased.”
The Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and the National Institute of Immunology is carrying out the trials of these vaccines.