The agriculture of the island state suffers from the damage caused by monkeys. Now it has been decided to determine the number of monkeys for calculating.
11: 36 • Updated 11:39
On Saturday, Sri Lanka began a national accounting to determine the size of the country’s monkey population. At the same time, the amounts of giant tracks and peacocks are also calculated.
The size of the populations is to be determined because it is these species that cause great damage to Sri Lanka’s agriculture.
The island state in the Indian Ocean is the world’s fourth largest exporter of coconut. In recent years, however, Sri Lanka’s agriculture has been increasingly suffering from the damage caused by monkeys and other animal -eating animals.
– The problem has grown so big that people have begun to give up agriculture. We lose about 20 percent of all agricultural production. It means 90 million coconuts per year, Sri Lanka’s Deputy Minister of Agriculture and livestock Namal karunaratne Comment on Reuters.
Animals are not wanted to kill
Agriculture accounts for about eight percent of Sri Lanka’s economy and employs about 8.1 million people, or almost half of the country’s inhabitants.
– Finding out the number of animals in cultivated areas is the first step. Once this is clear, we can create practices to control the situation, says Deputy Minister of Minister Karunaratne.
So far, it is unclear how to solve the pest problem.
Numerous Buddhist Temple monks participated on Saturday in animal computing in the city of Dambulla in the central parts of the country.
– This is a Buddhist country. We are opposed to killing animals. Nor do we like the fact that animals are exported abroad, the leader of the temple Halmillawave Premaratna quoth.
– We have some options. One would be to catch the animals and take them to an uninhabited island, Munkki ponders.
Source: Reuters