Giving monkeys a shot at living in the wild

A rehabilitation project in Maharashtra is giving orphaned or abandoned monkeys a chance to live freely in the wild

- Riddhi Doshi

They found Veera, just a few hours old, tucked between her dead mother’s breasts, the umbilical cord still attached to the newborn.

The mother had shielded her baby until her last breath. Shoora’s exhausted mother, on the other hand, abandoned him as soon as he was born. Shoora and Veera were found in the suburbs of Mumbai that sit on the fringes of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park.

These tiny bonnet macaques wouldn't survive without their mothers or their troops. Their rescuers were sure of that. Who would nurture them or teach them to find food or fight rivals for territory?

Bonnet macaques are social animals and best survive in the troops into which they are born, formed by related females. A few males usually find another tribe, but only after they mature. Every monkey has a role in the group. A few nurture the young, some protect them from harm. There is also a leader who keeps everyone in check. The structure ensures security.

Monkeys born in cities or its fringes, like Shoora and Veera, also have to deal with urban stressors—dog bites, electrocution and death by consuming food not meant for them. The danger of being taken captive by a madari (animal trainer), tied up and beaten for the rest of their lives is real too.

Even if none of this happened to Shoora and Veera, they, like hundreds of other monkeys across the country, would likely spend a lifetime in captivity in state-run animal orphanages or zoos. But Shoora and Veera’s fate might turn out to be different. They will get a real shot at living in the wild due to the efforts of their rescuers from the Mumbai-based not-for-profit organisation Resqink Association for Wildlife Welfare, or RAWW.

The organisation, founded in 2013, has been rewilding bonnet macaques (Macaca radiate), rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) and grey langurs (