The New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) has placed life-sized cut-outs of huge langur monkeys to scare rhesus macaques away from the G-20 Summit's pathways and event locations.
NDMC Vice Chairman Satish Upadhyay told Indian media that this is a temporary measure implemented in collaboration with the Delhi forest department to effectively contain the monkeys within the Ridge area.
Rhesus macaques are typically afraid of their fellow langur primates and don't share territory.
Similarly, to discourage monkeys from approaching hotels and venues linked to the G-20 Summit, the municipal authority also plans to employ 40 skilled personnel who are experts in imitating the langurs' call.
"They will be deployed at various sites across New Delhi to keep [rhesus] monkeys in check," Upadhyay said.
Despite these measures, experts have expressed doubts about their effectiveness and stressed the need for a more comprehensive investigation to tackle Delhi's long-standing problem with monkeys.
According to Faiyaz Khudsar, the individual in charge of the biodiversity parks initiative at the Delhi Development Authority, simply using stationary cut-outs might not be effective due to the crucial role of movement in this experiment, as he informed the Indian media. He also suggested there were too few cut-outs being used.
"They should put up these cut-outs in large numbers as multiple replications will be needed to ascertain the impact," Khudsar said.
An MCD official said that over the last 16 years, more than 21,000 monkeys have been relocated to the Asola Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary.
In May 2022, the rhesus macaque was removed from the Wildlife Protection Act (WPA), allowing them to be treated like domestic animals such as street cats or dogs.