The Taitung County Agriculture Department said it is considering holding monkey-catching contests in response to farmers’ complaints of rising incidents of Formosan rock macaques ravaging their farms.
Once an endangered species under state protection, the monkey population has recovered and become a headache for farmers, who complain that the animals frequently raid their fruit orchards.
Taitung County councilors on Thursday raised the issue during a review of the local government’s NT$360,000 pest control budget, with Chang Chuan Hsin-lan (張全馨嵐) of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) and independent Ku Chih-cheng (古志成) saying the county was not doing enough.
Photo: Huang Ming-tang, Taipei Times
Not enough funds have been doled out to township offices for subsidies to cover one-third of the costs of electrified fences as the government intended, the councilors said, adding that many farmers are still waiting for subsidies.
The county government should consider employing hunters to cull monkeys, Ku said.
Independent Taitung County Councilor Lin Wei-chih (林威志) objected to the proposal on humanitarian grounds, but said the department should find other ways to stop the monkeys from coming.
Department Director Hsu Rui-kuei (許瑞貴) said that the Lanyu Township Office’s contests for catching boars could be an effective solution for the county’s monkey problem.
Conducting sweeps in townships with catchers who utilize safe methods for capturing monkeys should help keep the monkey population 500m away from farmlands, he said.
Hsu was referring to a joint decision by the department and the Lanyu Township Office on May 24 that they would hold an event in September to round up domesticated pigs turned wild that have been menacing the county’s farmlands.
Taitung County Councilor Huang Pi-mei (黃碧妹) said that Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) has seen an increase in wild pigs, the offspring of domesticated pigs that had escaped from pens damaged by typhoons or other natural disasters.
The wild pigs are not only tipping over trash cans to look for food, they are also wreaking havoc on the taro crop on the island, she added.
The department said that the September event is to be held in two stages, with each team consisting of three people — two Taitung residents and one Lanyu resident.
In the first stage, teams would have to catch or round up two pigs to qualify for the second stage.
The top three teams would receive NT$50,000, NT$20,000 and NT$15,000 in prize money, while the rest would each receive NT$5,000 as a consolation prize, the department said.
The township office said that Lanyu residents are very protective of family land and do not usually allow strangers to set foot on their land.
As such, it is still a question whether Lanyu residents would allow highly skilled hunters from Taitung or other Aboriginal communities to join the boar-catching contest, it said.
Meetings would be convened to discuss the issue with township residents and reach a decision as soon as possible, the office said.
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