Family planning drug reaches WII, tests on monkeys likely this May

The Wildlife Institute of India (WII) is likely to test from this May an oral contraceptive on female monkeys in an attempt to restrict the runaway primate population, especially in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand where the animal has become a nuisance and menace.

Called the porcine zona pellucida, the vaccine is imported from the US where it was successfully tested.

“We have procured the drug and are in the process of finalising the procedure,” said VB Mathur, the WII director.

Scientists at the Dehradun-based WII are optimistic about contraceptive programme — the first in India where dwindling forests have driven the highly adaptable and opportunistic monkeys towards villages and cities.

Uttarakhand has nearly 150,000 monkeys, according to a forest department estimate, and their numbers are growing fast.

The scientists hope that the vaccine will get the required clearance from the government’s animal ethics committee to conduct the test as it doesn’t involve spaying or neutering the animals.

Captive monkeys in the Chidiapur rescue centre in Haridwar will undergo the test in a controlled environment to observe any changes in their behaviour or vital stats. The female monkeys will be given a dose and observed for a week.

After the tests, the drug will be administered on monkeys in Chandrabani, outside the WII campus where around 450 monkeys are found.

It is an expensive project under the National Mission for Himalayan Studies as each dose of the imported contraceptive costs Rs 6,000, a sum that needs to cross multiple layers of bureaucratic turnstiles, said an official who doesn’t want to be named.

Experts believe the drug can be manufactured In India, say at the National Institute of Immunology in New Delhi, which will make it cheaper and easily available.

The chemical zona pellucida comes from pigs. It produces antibodies that prevent the sperm from attaching to the egg. The vaccine could be given to monkeys mixed with their food, or injected.

The monkeys getting the medicine will be tagged and given at least two booster doses in two years.

“The drug would allow the female monkeys to mate without getting pregnant. We only have to chalk out how this could be used in open areas. A lot of research and development is to be done,” S Sathyakumar, an expert at the institute, said.

The programme was developed to keep the monkey population down after techniques such as catch-and-sterilise measures failed.

Monkeys are declared a vermin in many districts in the country, where they have destroyed crops and orchards, but wildlife lovers interpret it as a euphemism for the death sentence as the tag permits culling.