dehradun uttarakhand will put its burgeoning monkey population on the pill to control the simian menace in its towns and cities the state forest department in collaboration with the wildlife institute of india wii will administer an oral immunocontraceptive porcine zona pellucida pzp to female monkeys to render them temporarily infertilethe project to curtail the burgeoning monkey population is being pegged as the first of its kind in the countrythe immunocontraceptive will be mixed in food left for monkeys that remain at large pzp which has to be administered every year will produce antibodies that attach to the sperm receptors on eggs in the female blocking fertilisationsharing details about the project wii director v b mathur said the vaccine will be mixed with food and will render the female infertile for a year the dose will be repeated over a period of four years the monkeys will either be tagged or identified from their traitsmonkeys have a free run in many temples in the state stealing food and other be longings from unsuspecting devotees in haridwar a spate of simian attacks on pilgrims in 2010 had sent the state forest authorities on a frenzied monkeycatching drive and it is not just in places of worship that monkeys have been terrorising people the primates patrol tracts of forest land en route rishikesh to dehradun and often run after cars and twowheelersthe situation is no different in mussoorie where every winter it is brisk monkey business with the mammals rummaging through bins sneaking into homes and running riot in the gardens chewing their way through plants the pilot project to put monkeys on birth control is expected to take wing within the next two months according to akash verma divisional forest officer of purola forest division and govind widlife sanctuary who has proposed the project akash verma said according to some estimates there are about 150 lakh monkeys wreaking havoc in various cities and towns in the statetheir population is increasing by a whopping 36 every yearcases of manmonkey conflict are directly proportional to the rising number of primates we need to regulate their populationto acceptable numbers in the long term verma saidverma added that the us and australia had used immunocontraception for animals but this is the first time an indian state would be experimenting with an oral vaccine to check animal population he said since pzp is expensive and has to be procured from the us the state will also look into the possibility of producing a similar vaccine that can be manufactured on a mass scaleprincipal chief conservator of forests wildlife dvs khati said though we have been sterilising monkeys we need to experiment with other methodologies to control their population