Bali is experiencing an increase in the monkey business amid its closure of COVID-19.
Due to the loss of tourism business on the island of Indonesia, hundreds of hungry macaques who used to eat snacks from visitors resort to attacking the houses of the villagers to look for food.
Villagers now pay a daily reward for fruit, peanuts and other foods to prevent a potentially violent invasion of the nearly 600 primates living in a sanctuary just 500 m away.
“We are afraid that hungry monkeys will become wild and cruel,” Saskara Gustu Alit told The Associated Press.
International travel to Bali was banned in July. The tourist island’s economy is dominated by the 5 million tourists it receives annually, including 6,000 visitors a month to the Sangeh Monkey Forest, which also closed to the public in July.
Under normal circumstances, monkeys are tame and interact with visitors to the popular protected forest area.
Now, the animals have lost additional bites from visitors and the sanctuary is running out with its own funds to supply them with food, according to operations manager Made Mohon.
“This prolonged pandemic exceeds our expectations,” Mohon said. “Food for monkeys has become a problem.”
Food costs for omnivores cost about $ 60 a day, Mohon said, for 440 pounds of cassava, monkey staple food and 22 pounds of bananas.
Villagers said monkeys are known to roam the village and snatch things, such as daily religious food offerings.
“A few days ago I attended a traditional ceremony at a temple near the Sangeh forest,” Gustu Alit said. “When I parked my car and pulled out two plastic bags containing food and flowers as an offering, two monkeys suddenly appeared who grabbed it all and quickly ran into the woods.”
Another major concern is that monkeys are simply bored, as they have lost thousands of playmates now that tourists are no longer there.
“That’s why I urged the villagers here to come to the forest to play with the monkeys and offer them food,” Alit said. “I think they need to interact with humans as often as possible so they don’t go wild.”
With publishing cables