Himachal Pradesh launches monkey sterilization drive to curb its population

SHIMLA - The Himachal Pradesh government has launched a monkey sterilization drive in Shimla to curb the increasing population of the primate in the city.

Though the sterilization drive was first launched in 2007, it has picked up pace after the High Court imposed ban on monkey killings in January.

Sandeep Rattan, monkey sterilization official from the Shimla forest department, said: “Shimla holds the honour of holding such a unique campaign. Nowhere else in the world, this sort of campaign on such a large scale has been implemented.”

“The main focus was to sterilize the males, so that we could help in curbing their population growth and till date, we have done around 13,000 sterilizations,” he added.

He further said that three monkey sterilization centres are already running, and soon one more centre is coming up in Una district with the help of which 25,000 sterilizations could be done annually. (ANI)