THE LOSSES FARMERS are suffering at the hands of monkeys may be increasing, but experts do not believe the primate population is.
In fact, officials at the Barbados Primate Research Centre (BPRC) at Grenade Hall in St Peter stressed that the last “census”, conducted less than five years ago, put the green monkey population at around 15 000 and there was no evidence to suggest it had grown appreciably since then.
What commercial and backyard farmers have been experiencing over the past two years, especially during the dry summer months, explained expert Jean Baulu, has been migration of monkeys away from their natural habitat in the gullies to agricultural fields in search of fruit and ground provisions.
But chief executive officer of the Barbados Agricultural Society, James Paul, maintained yesterday that whatever the cause, the impact on farmers was too great for the country not to take deliberate action to control the primate population. (RRM)
Please read the full story in today’s Daily Nation, or in the eNATION edition.
