The monkey is not always a God: Attitudinal differences toward crop-raiding macaques and why it matters for conflict mitigation

Abstract

Attitudinal differences toward wildlife have important implications for conflict management and when the species in question have strong cultural and religious associations, conflict mitigation becomes a challenging endeavor. We investigated farmers' attitudes toward two different crop-raiding macaque species, the rhesus macaque in northern India, and the bonnet macaque in southern India. Apart from regional differences in attitudes, we also assessed temporal changes in attitude toward the rhesus macaque. We carried out household surveys using a semistructured questionnaire to collect data. Our findings reveal that respondents in southern and northern India differ significantly in their views regarding species sanctity and preference for mitigation options. Although people's perceptions of the rhesus macaques had changed over time in northern India, farmers were still unwilling to cause harm to the macaques. We discuss the underlying causes of these observed differences in attitude and their impact on the management of human-macaque conflict.

Understanding primate‐human interaction: Socioeconomic correlates of local awareness and attitude toward the endangered golden langur Trachypithecus geei (Khajuria, 1956) in Bhutan

“…However, golden langurs do cause crop damage when their habitats are severely fragmented by agriculture (Roy & Nagarajan, ). Crop raiding by other langur species has been recently reported for the Kashmir gray langur ( Semnopithecus ajax ; Mir, Noor, Habib, & Veeraswami, ), the Javan langur ( Trachypithecus auratus ; Partasasmita, Iskandar, & Malone, ), the capped langur ( Trachypithecus pileatus ; Naher et al, ), the Southern Plains gray langur ( Semnopithecus dussumieri ; Kumara & Diandra, ), the Hanuman langur ( Semnopithecus entellus ; Anand, Binoy, & Radhakrishna, ), and the Central Himalayan gray langur ( Semnopithecus schistaceus ; Thinley, Norbu, Dorji, Lham, & Wangchuk, ).…”

“…The golden langur's religious significance in Hinduism (Lee & Priston, ; Pirta, Gadgil, & Kharshikar, ) was evidenced in this study, albeit by a small percentage (2%) of respondents who deemed it as a reincarnation of Hanuman, the monkey god. Despite Buddhists forming the majority (80%) of Bhutan's populace, a small proportion (18%) are Hindus who religiously venerate macaques and langurs as gods in South and South East Asia (Anand et al, ). The golden langur in Assam is also religiously significant to local indigenous tribal communities (Roy & Nagarajan, ; Talukdar & Gupta, ).…”

“…Despite limited crop damage and being protected, the golden langur potentially faces local retaliation as experienced by gray langurs in Dagana where frustrated farmers killed them due to repeated crop damage (Thinley et al, ). Lethal retaliation against crop‐raiding primates has also occurred elsewhere for example, long‐tailed macaques ( Macaca fascicularis ) and protected Javan langurs have been shot by locals in Karawangi, West Java (Partasasmita et al, ), whereas bonnet macaques ( Macaca radiata ) have been reportedly killed by frustrated farmers in Kerala, India (Anand et al, ). The retaliation risk to golden langurs in Bhutan reinforces an urgent need to conduct awareness and education campaigns, and positively change human perception, attitude, and tolerance (Sillero‐Zubiri, Sukumar, & Treves, ).…”

Interpreting People’s Behavior Toward Primates Using Qualitative Data: a Case Study from North Morocco

“…Human-primate interactions are influenced by diverse cultural, social, ecological, and other components that may be unique to geographical regions and are fundamental to the continued existence of remaining primate populations (Dore 2017;Hill and Webber 2010;Lee and Priston 2005;Parathian et al 2018;Waters et al 2018a). Many negative human-primate interactions are underpinned by social or political conflicts where, for example, marginalized people consider wildlife to be the state's responsibility and hold it responsible for the losses they incur to their livelihoods (Anand et al 2018;Margulies and Karanth 2018). This perception is particularly common among people living around protected areas or where the state excludes local people from forest or wildlife management.…”

“…Some macaque species are commensal with people because of their ability to live in heavily anthropogenically altered environments (Richard et al 1989;Wheatley et al 2002). Many Asian macaque species regularly enter agricultural fields (Anand et al 2018;Hill 2017;Knight 2003). This behavior is commonly referred to as crop-raiding but because of the negative connotations associated with that term, we follow other researchers' recommendations and refer to it as crop-foraging or crop feeding (Hill 2015;Hockings et al 2015).…”