Sri Lanka Counts Monkeys, Peacocks and Squirrels to Tackle Crop Damage

FILE PHOTO: A man pulls a cart as he transports sacks filled with potatoes at a market in Colombo, Sri Lanka, November 23, 2024. REUTERS/Thilina Kaluthotage/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A man pulls a cart as he transports sacks filled with potatoes at a market in Colombo, Sri Lanka, November 23, 2024. REUTERS/Thilina Kaluthotage/File Photo
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Sri Lanka Counts Monkeys, Peacocks and Squirrels to Tackle Crop Damage

FILE PHOTO: A man pulls a cart as he transports sacks filled with potatoes at a market in Colombo, Sri Lanka, November 23, 2024. REUTERS/Thilina Kaluthotage/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A man pulls a cart as he transports sacks filled with potatoes at a market in Colombo, Sri Lanka, November 23, 2024. REUTERS/Thilina Kaluthotage/File Photo

Sri Lanka began a wildlife census on Saturday to count monkeys, peacocks and giant squirrels, aiming to manage their populations as farmers complain of agricultural losses.
Agriculture accounts for 8% of the country's economy and employs 8.1 million people, government data showed.
Sri Lanka is the fourth-largest coconut products exporter globally and produces about 3 billion cashew and other nuts annually, according to the Exports Development Board (EDB).
But coconut production, along with vegetable and fruit cultivation, has been hit due to crop destruction by monkeys, peacocks and giant squirrels, a top government official said.
"The problem has become so bad people are giving up farming. We are losing about 20% of total agricultural production. It is estimated that 90 million coconuts are lost every year," Namal Karunaratne, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Livestock, told Reuters.
"The census is the first step to understanding the density of these animals in farming areas so we can formulate proper policies to manage them."
The census comes after an incident in February when a monkey caused a nationwide blackout and power cuts lasting for three days.
Edirisinghe Arachchilage Gnanasena, a 72-year-old farmer, counted 45 monkeys, six giant squirrels and nine peacocks, in the five minutes allocated for the census. His eight-acre plot of farmland in Dambulla, a city in central Sri Lanka, has been struggling with crop losses for years.
With an air gun across his shoulder and lead pellets in a plastic bag, Gnanasena spends hours patrolling the neat rows of coconut, mango and banana plants he has carefully grown.
But tribes of monkeys still strip trees of hundreds of coconuts and pick mangoes, while peacocks swallow long beans whole, Gnanasena said.
"Monkeys are used to the air gun, so I light firecrackers to scare them off. But they always come back."
Farmers attribute the rising numbers of monkeys, peacocks, porcupines and wild boars in the area to habitat loss.
"I hope this census leads to long-term solutions. That is what we want," he added.
"This is not the fault of the animals. It is the fault of the humans."



Trump to Release 80,000 Pages on JFK Assassination 

Newly-elected President Kennedy posed for first pictures at his White House desk, Jan. 21, 1961, before plunging into a busy round of conferences. (AP)
Newly-elected President Kennedy posed for first pictures at his White House desk, Jan. 21, 1961, before plunging into a busy round of conferences. (AP)
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Trump to Release 80,000 Pages on JFK Assassination 

Newly-elected President Kennedy posed for first pictures at his White House desk, Jan. 21, 1961, before plunging into a busy round of conferences. (AP)
Newly-elected President Kennedy posed for first pictures at his White House desk, Jan. 21, 1961, before plunging into a busy round of conferences. (AP)

President Donald Trump plans to release about 80,000 pages of material related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Tuesday, seeking to honor his campaign promise to provide more transparency about the shock event in Texas.

"It's a lot of stuff, and you'll make your own determination," Trump told reporters about the pages on Monday. Trump signed an order shortly after taking office in January related to the release, prompting the US Federal Bureau of Investigation to find thousands of new documents related to the Kennedy assassination in Dallas.

Kennedy's murder has been attributed to a sole gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald. The Justice Department and other federal government bodies reaffirmed that conclusion in the intervening decades. But polls show many Americans believe his death was a result of a conspiracy.

Experts doubt the new trove of information will change the underlying facts of the case, that Lee Harvey Oswald opened fire at Kennedy from a window at a schoolbook deposit warehouse as the presidential motorcade passed by on a Dallas highway.

"People expecting big things are almost certain to be disappointed," said Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, who authored a book about the assassination.

He said some of the pages could simply be the release of previously published material that had a few words redacted.

Trump has also promised to release documents on the assassinations of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Robert Kennedy, both of whom were killed in 1968.

Trump has allowed more time to come up with a plan for those releases.

Trump's secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of Robert Kennedy and nephew of John F. Kennedy, has said he believes the Central Intelligence Agency was involved in his uncle's death, an allegation the agency has described as baseless.

Kennedy Jr. has also said he believes his father was killed by multiple gunmen, an assertion that contradicted official accounts.

One revelation the documents could contain is that the CIA was more aware of Oswald than it has previously disclosed. Questions have remained about what the CIA knew about Oswald's visits to Mexico City six weeks before the assassination. During that trip, Oswald visited the Soviet embassy.

"People have been waiting for decades for this," Trump said. "It's going to be very interesting."