Public Enemy No 1 - Bonnet Macaques

Valparai, Tamil Nadu

It’s rather interesting that I got to see the Bonnet Macaques right before I saw them all over the news. The Government of Kerela apparently has had it with these guys along with some other species and has proposed far reaching powers for local bodies which include extermination in a new bill. That’s right, relocation and mass sterilization for menaces along with extermination for any animal that attacks a Human. How do they propose to identify an individual animal that lives in a group though? That’s just beyond me especially when their main target seems to be the menace of Bonett Macaques who they propose to take off protection and downgrade the species to schedule 2 to enable their capture, transportation and elimination. How do you justify culling orders on a species that’s listed as Vulnerable by the International Union For Conservation Of Nature? I’m not even going to go into whether the authority of culling should be brought down from the Chief Wildlife Warden to the Chief Conservators of Forests. I’m asking how are common Humans gonna tell one monkey from another in a group of 20 probably related ones and should we be even considering the mass killing of a globally recognized vulnerable species?

The whole thing seems based on the premise that the animals will learn their limits through operant conditioning or just maybe, it’s about getting a license to kill em off for appeasement. The bill also proposes to give local bodies like Panchayats the power to act swiftly in countering animal threats. That’s awesome but how are we gonna condition and educate the proposed executors of the bill? Are they gonna get Zoology degree holders into every Panchayat office? I think not. Am I the only one who’s smelling the possibility of a “Oh we tried” bogie here? They do have local governance body elections in Kerela in a couple of months. It’d just be sad if we simply just handed over such kinds of powers to unqualified people for whatever the reason. How would the conditioning of the animals happen if it’s the wrong animals always getting penalized after an alleged attack? The conditioning that they’re perhaps trying to emulate is usually successful in laboratories and zoos when conducted under a lot of scrutiny by scientists and rewards for behavior are also usually incorporated into it along with punishments. Can you mass train a generation of wild animals who don’t understand your law?

The proposed first step of relocation seems to be the best bet in my limited understanding but then the Elephant in the room, or rather the Monkey on your back with regards to that is, where to? Vantara will probably take the Elephants happily but the Monkeys maybe a little too exotic for their tastes LOL. That pun is totally intended if you know what I mean. But where do you send them when you’ve firstly chopped up and sold their territory? Then over generations, you’ve turned them into beggars outside your temples and towns and now they don’t really have the skills necessary to survive in the forests like their cousins cause they have invested all their energy in being reliant on you for sustenance. Their system of survival has tied itself to yours cause they adapted to humans. How you gonna do this? Well, since I don’t have a PHD in wildlife science or zoology, I seriously hope people with these qualifications are brought on board before considering such action because animals just don’t have their senses tuned like we do and we seriously need some experts on board before bringing forth ecological ruin. Alternatively, all of this could just be a ploy to secure a license to cull the lot which, in turn would also bring you ecological ruin and in language we better understand, it would completely ruin the land. 

All of the Bonnet Macaques I saw around Valparai were by the road and never in the forest. Maybe they’re not as much a problem for the residents of Tamil Nadu as they are in Kerela but we have to admit that we have successfully conditioned these animals to our presence and they now forage around our dwellings. They’ve adapted to us. Remember my approach to Valparai which I wrote about in “Welcome To The 7th Heaven”? These guys literally stepped up to me to pose and climbed all over my cab. Like I said, every species has different senses tuned differently and that’s why we cannot have a one size fits all approach to wildlife management. In Valparai, the three species of Primates that I saw were within close proximity of each other and they all reacted differently to my attention. The Bonnet Macaques stepped up to me, the Lion Tailed Macaques just went about their business and one of them even shoved me a little to get past while the Nilgiri Langurs mostly always scampered away. All three species obviously have adapted differently to Humans and that’s as plain to see as daylight.

Staying with what happened in Valparai, I woke up to the rain on my second morning there. The sun was up though by the time Anees was over to pick me up and I decided to check for the Puthuthottam troop of Lion Tailed Macaques first. Turned out that those guys gave their morning outing a miss after the rain and so I decided to give Monica Garden a chance next. It was closer than Kurangumudi and I reckoned that morning was the best time to hopefully catch the Grey Hornbills. Well, we didn’t see any Hornbills either. In fact all we saw that day after the rain was Bonett Macaques by the side of the road and on rooftops drying themselves off while they still could before the next downpour.

I had discovered amazing light conditions that sometimes occur when the sun comes up after the rain in Jhalana a couple of years ago and had written about it in “The Dazzling Forest”. Well, it was those conditions again in Valparai that morning and I really tried to make the most of it. It was pretty obvious that the other animals were hearing the thunder just like we were and would probably not venture out so we stayed close to base and Anees drove around those beautiful hills while I enjoyed the Valparai scenery that morning with breaks in between to photograph some very friendly and close Bonnet Macaques who you see here. I’m pretty happy with this set. Wandering around those hills after the rain worked out pretty well for me with regards to getting pictures of these guys for sure.

I’d just gotten back to my room for lunch when the rain finally started up again and with it came the famous Valparai fog. Both of which didn’t show any signs of relenting for the rest of that day and all of the next as well. It’s not too exciting watching the rain and fog for a day and a half straight with nothing else to do but then it wasn’t a surprise either. It was accounted for. I was just hoping to get one last day at Kurangumudi with decent weather. I really wanted one more try at The Wanderoo and The Langurs.

Well, that’s for another post. Let me sort the photos out first.