《TAIPEI TIMES》 Taitung seeking monkey chaser to protect its fruit

/ Staff writer, with CNA

A monkey chaser is being sought as Taitung County’s Yanping Township （延平） tries to protect its crops from the year-round pest, Yanping Industrial Tourism Office worker Hsu Hung-wen （許鴻文） said.

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The problem is most prevalent at Yanping’s fruit farms, where monkeys ravage the produce as soon as it is ripe, leaving only the fruit that is not sweet or has flaws, Hsu said.

On Wednesday, a pineapple farmer woke up to find bits of fruit scattered all over his farm after a raid by monkeys, Hsu said, adding that so far this season, the farmer has lost half of his 3,000 pineapples to the animals.

Taiwanese macaques, the most prevalent primate species in the area, eat almost everything they find on a farm — oranges, pineapples, peaches, papayas and even corn, Hsu said.

Sometimes they take one bite of a fruit and then toss it away if they do not like the taste, he said.

Hsu cited a township official as saying that monkeys not only ravage crops, but also bother farm animals, sometimes jumping on pigs’ backs or seizing chickens and carrying them up a tree.

Over the years, farmers have tried to repel monkeys with firecrackers or slingshots, but such methods have proved ineffective and too time consuming, Hsu said.

So the township is to hire a monkey chaser for a monthly salary of NT$23,000 （US$739）, Hsu said, adding that applications opened on Thursday and close on Friday next week.

The worker will be assigned to designated fields, with a focus on the pineapple harvest season from July 17 to Aug. 31, Hsu said.

According to the county government, the monkey population in Taitung is about 30,000.

Estimated farm losses caused by the animals average about NT$100 million per year, it said.

新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES