About a thousand monkeys, large and small, that have grown up freely at Charmugaria port in Madaripur Sadar upazila are in a bad way. They have spread through the town in search of food. Townspeople are fed up with them and many are beating them, putting the monkeys at risk.

Government feeding of the monkeys began on 27 October, but local people say the monkeys are still not returning to the Charmugaria area.

In the 1950s and 1960s, many monkeys came to the port area from Nadia and Shantipur in India and settled permanently at Charmugaria in Madaripur. There were several thousand then, but after battling nature and hunger about a thousand survive in the area today.

With the fruit trees that once grew in the area gone, the monkeys face a severe food shortage. There is disagreement over how many monkeys are at Charmugaria port: according to the Madaripur forest department and livestock department there are about 1,000, while local people put the number at about 1,200.

Locals said there were once several thousand monkeys at the port, living in six groups: at Kalibari, JTC, the police station or outpost, James Academy, the riverbank and the Jamaddar Mill area of Charmugaria.

One group lived at Kalibari and Swarnakarpatti, another at the crossroads and riverbank, and another at JTC and Adamjee. Monkeys from one group did not enter another's area, and if one strayed in by mistake a fight would break out.

Now, driven by hunger, the monkeys have spread across the town, raiding houses and even schools, offices, businesses and food shops.

According to local sources, the monkeys were endangered during the floods of 1988 and 1998, when many died. During the 1998 flood a jute officer named Nabi Shaheb fed them for a long time. When the matter came to the attention of former deputy commissioner Farhad Rahman, he appealed to the then environment minister, Syeda Sajeda Chowdhury, to save the monkeys, and the minister sanctioned relief for the monkeys as well as for flood victims.

Food shortages returned from 1999. From 2003, for several years, an organisation called Friends of Nature distributed food to the monkeys almost every Friday. Alongside them, from February to September 2006, Mojibul Haque Dulu, executive director of an NGO called JCDP, distributed Tk 500 worth of food to the monkeys every day.

Several sources said the government forest department invited a Tk 1 crore tender in 2006, which included Tk 12,500 worth of food for the monkeys every day, a permanent shed for shelter and the planting of various fruit trees. In 2008 a shed was built for the monkeys at a cost of Tk 5 lakh. Some trees were planted here and there, but they died for lack of care.

Some allocations came for the monkeys twice later, but for a long time there was no government feeding, and newborn and other monkeys died. Many monkeys left the district for lack of food. Since 27 October, a government allocation of Tk 29 lakh has come for the monkeys' food for one year. Although the Madaripur forest department has begun feeding through a tender, the monkeys are not returning to Charmugaria.

Shamim International won the tender to distribute the food, and the local voluntary organisation Swapner Sabuj Bangladesh was given responsibility for overseeing it.

Imran Munshi, general secretary of Swapner Sabuj Bangladesh, told Jagonews that food is given three days a week, on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday: 70 kg of bananas, 40 kg of bread, 40 kg of cucumbers and 25 kg of peanuts each time. Because the monkeys have moved from Charmugaria towards the town, it is hard to find them, but he hopes that with regular feeding they will return to their home area.

The Madaripur forest department has built an eco-park at Nayachar in the Charmugaria area, where a sanctuary for the monkeys is to be created. The first phase of the eco-park was completed, but the second phase has not been carried out because of land complications, so the monkeys could not be moved there. As a result, the eco-park, built on 10.36 acres, is going to waste without ever being used.

Rajan Mahmud, founding director of the local environmental organisation Friends of Nature in Madaripur, told Jagonews that the monkeys, born in a natural environment, are now heading for extinction for lack of food. The government and local voluntary organisations must come forward to preserve this heritage, he said, and those concerned must ensure the monkeys actually receive the food allocation. He also called for the eco-park to be opened quickly and a sanctuary set up for the monkeys.

Russell Hawlader, a resident of Charmugaria, said: "Even a few months ago there were many monkeys in Charmugaria. Now, for lack of food, they've spread towards the town. The government has started feeding them again in the past few days, but the number of monkeys is low."

Shahjahan Khan, a member of the Madaripur district forest and environment committee, said the monkeys have entered the town for food and are raiding people's homes. Since they are being fed again but are not going to the area, some other way must be found to take them back to Charmugaria.

Several traders in Charmugaria, including food shop owners Afzal and Kalam, banana trader Wahab, grocer Milon and retailer Samad, said there are about a thousand monkeys at Charmugaria. The monkeys are dying day by day for lack of food, and many are moving to neighbouring districts.

"We are fed up with the monkeys. We can't do business properly because of them. In the blink of an eye they snatch food and run. We are often forced to drive them off with sticks. Feeding them properly has become urgent," they said.

Madaripur forest department official Jahangir Alam said the monkeys are being fed again and he hopes they will gradually come back to Charmugaria.

On the eco-park, he said several local people have filed cases over the land, and work has been stalled for two years because of this. He hopes that if it is resolved quickly work can resume, and a sanctuary can then be built for the monkeys.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.