AZUMINO, March 10 \u2014 \u200cPunch the baby snow monkey and his stuffed \u200borangutan have captured hearts around the world, spawned memes and even won over the White House with their charm.<\/p>\n
But in \u200cthe wild, his fellow Japanese macaques often have a starkly different image: \u200bpests to be shooed away or even eliminated to prevent economic damage to farmers.<\/p>\n
The agriculture ministry estimated that monkeys caused \u00a5770 million (RM19 million) worth of damage in \u200b2024 \u2013 enough for Japan to sanction the capture and killing of thousands of primates every year.<\/p>\n
The treatment of the monkeys is an issue that divides those who suffer the consequence of stolen crops and others who advocate for a more humane solution.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s important to put countermeasures \u200cin place to prevent damage,\u201d said Takayo Soma, a primatologist at Kyoto \u2060University. \u201cBut it isn\u2019t very scientific to \u2060cull a certain number of monkeys without proper \u2060justification.\u201d<\/p>\n
Killing a troop of monkeys \u2060only invites another \u2060to take its place, rendering the practice ineffective and \u201cnever-ending\u201d, said Shigeyuki Izumiyama, a professor at Shinshu University.<\/p>\n
Instead, some advocate for non-lethal measures such as electric fences \u2060and \u201cmonkey dogs\u201d, or pet dogs that can be trained to chase the intruders away across an entire mountain.<\/p>\n
Apple farmer Takumi Matsuda, one of few agriculturalists enamoured with snow monkeys, said humans need to recognise the role they play in causing the problem in the first place, such as \u2060by encroaching on the critters\u2019 natural habitat.<\/p>\n
Matsuda has amassed a following on Instagram by sharing photos and videos he takes of the \u2060primates in the mountains of Nagano prefecture, in central Japan, but said he also understands \u2060farmers\u2019 \u2060concerns.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not that farmers hate the monkeys; they are worried about the impact on \u200btheir livelihood,\u201d he said. \u201cI really hope Punch will \u200bbe a starting point for a \u200clot more people to go and see real \u200bJapanese macaques living in \u200bthe wild.\u201d \u2014 Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AZUMINO, March 10 \u2014 \u200cPunch the baby snow monkey and his stuffed \u200borangutan have captured hearts around the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":321939,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[173870,173869,22829,32066,173871,111,139,69,147,22828,406],"class_list":["post-321938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-agriculture-ministry","tag-azumino","tag-japanese-macaques","tag-kyoto-university","tag-nagano-prefecture","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-shinshu-university","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}