Shimla Macaque-Attack Death Exposes the Gap Left When the 2022 Amendment Delisted Rhesus Monkeys

The news

Shimla, Himachal Pradesh. The Indian Express reports that a 63-year-old woman in Shimla was attacked by a pack of rhesus macaques on the roof of her house on August 30, suffered grievous injuries including spinal damage, and died on September 5. The Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972 listed it as a protected species under Part I of Schedule II, but the Wild Life (Protection) Amendment Act, 2022 removed it; a “schedule” is a list attached to the Act, and a species on it gets the Act’s protection and the forest department’s attention. Himachal’s Chief Wildlife Warden, Alok Prem Nagar, told the paper that State forest departments are “no more responsible” for the monkey menace and that a monkey “is now like a stray animal, which falls under the purview of civic bodies”. A senior Indian Forest Service officer said urban local bodies such as the Shimla Municipal Corporation are “not fully competent” for the job because of a lack of funds and of trained manpower to capture and sterilise monkeys, and that forest departments no longer receive the central funds they once did for monkey control. Municipal Commissioner Sachin Kanwal said staff are being trained to capture monkeys. Deputy Conservator of Forests (Wildlife) Shahnawaz Ahmad Bhat said the department still intervenes, largely around forest areas, but charges the civic bodies; sterilisation costs ₹700 per monkey. Shimla records 50 to 55 monkey attacks a month, according to municipal officials. Official numbers cited by the paper show Himachal’s estimated macaque population falling from 3,17,512 in 2004 to 2,26,086 in 2013 and 1,36,443 in 2019-20, which the forest department credits largely to sterilisation: 1,86,448 monkeys were sterilised between 2006 and March 2024. Wildlife expert Shaminder Boparai said opinion is divided on whether monkeys should be treated as vermin — animals that may be killed as pests — or protected, and blamed public feeding for drawing them out of forests. A Shimla NGO protested last week demanding ₹5 lakh compensation for the family and action against those who feed monkeys. Under the State’s wildlife compensation policy, severe injury attracts ₹75,000, permanent disability ₹1 lakh and death ₹4 lakh, but officials indicated the family is unlikely to qualify because the species is no longer covered by the Act. The syllabus link is human–wildlife conflict and the division of functions between departments and local bodies.

Static syllabus linkage

1. The 2022 Amendment shrank the Act’s schedules from six to four. The Wild Life (Protection) Amendment Act, 2022 reorganised the schedules so that Schedule I covers species with the highest protection, Schedule II species with lesser protection, Schedule III protected plants, and Schedule IV specimens listed in the appendices of CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. The old Schedule V, which listed vermin, was abolished. The amendment also aligned the Act with India’s obligations under CITES. Because the Act defines a wild animal by reference to the schedules, a species dropped from them largely falls outside the Act’s protective machinery.
2. Section 62 lets the Centre declare an animal vermin for a place and a period. Even after 2022, Section 62 allows the Central Government, by notification, to declare any wild animal other than those in Schedule I to be vermin for a specified area and period, which permits it to be hunted there. Section 11 separately allows the Chief Wildlife Warden to permit the hunting of an animal that has become dangerous to human life. These are the Act’s traditional tools for conflict, and both assume the animal is within the Act in the first place. Himachal Pradesh obtained central vermin notifications for the macaque in parts of the State in the previous decade, though they were for limited areas and periods.
3. Wildlife is a Concurrent subject, and animal cruelty is also a municipal function. The 42nd Amendment of 1976 moved forests and the protection of wild animals and birds from the State List to the Concurrent List as entries 17A and 17B. Article 48A directs the State to protect the environment and safeguard forests and wildlife, and Article 51A(g) makes it a fundamental duty of citizens to have compassion for living creatures. The Twelfth Schedule, added by the 74th Amendment, lists “cattle pounds; prevention of cruelty to animals” among the functions that may be devolved to municipalities. The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960 continues to apply to monkeys whatever their status under the wildlife law.
4. Sterilisation is the standard non-lethal tool for commensal primates. Commensal animals are those that live alongside humans and feed on human food and waste, as urban macaques do. Sterilisation reduces the population over years without the public controversy of culling, but it needs trained capture teams, veterinary facilities and sustained funding. Its results are slow and depend on covering a large share of breeding females, which is why a gap in funding or institutional responsibility can undo a decade of work.

Why UPSC loves this

1. Human–wildlife conflict is a recurring Mains theme. The GS3 syllabus covers conservation and disaster management, and questions on human–wildlife conflict have asked candidates to discuss causes and mitigation. The Shimla case adds a governance dimension — the conflict is not in a forest but on a city roof, and the question is which department owns it.
2. Prelims tests the Act’s schedules and sections. After the 2022 amendment, statement questions on the number of schedules, the fate of the vermin schedule and the Section 62 power are natural targets. The Concurrent List entries 17A and 17B inserted in 1976 are an old favourite in polity questions as well.
3. Local government functions are part of the GS2 syllabus. Devolution of powers and finances to local levels is named in GS2. A function transferred to a municipal corporation without funds or staff is a textbook example of the unfunded mandate problem that examiners like candidates to illustrate with a real case.

Analysis

1. Delisting removed the money from a programme that was working. The population figures show that sterilisation had roughly halved Himachal’s estimated macaque numbers between 2004 and 2019-20. The legal change did not end the problem; it ended the forest department’s duty and the central funding that paid for the solution. A policy that transfers a function while its budget disappears is not a transfer but an abandonment. The rational reform would have been to move the money with the mandate, or to keep sterilisation as a funded wildlife-management activity regardless of the species’ schedule.
2. Charging municipalities ₹700 per monkey inverts the logic of expertise. The forest department has the trained capture teams and the veterinary experience, and it now sells them to a civic body that has neither. This creates a market inside government where the poorer institution pays the better-equipped one, and every rupee spent on inter-departmental billing is a rupee not spent on capture. The counter-view is that forest staff are stretched and should concentrate on forests, which is fair. But then the State must fund and train a municipal unit before, not after, a death.
3. Compensation tied to legal status treats identical harm unequally. A family whose member is killed by a leopard receives ₹4 lakh under the State policy, while a family whose member is killed by macaques may receive nothing, only because of a schedule amendment. From the victim’s side the harm is the same and neither family chose the risk. Compensation should follow the nature of the injury and the public character of the hazard, not the taxonomic list. A State could fix this by executive order, without waiting for Parliament.
4. Feeding is the root cause, and it is a behaviour the law can reach. Mr. Boparai’s point that public feeding draws monkeys out of forests is supported by the pattern of attacks in towns, temples and highways. Municipal bye-laws can prohibit feeding and penalise it, and the NGO’s demand for stricter action shows public appetite for enforcement. Enforcement is politically delicate because feeding monkeys has religious associations for many residents, which is also why culling under Section 62 has never been a popular answer.
5. The debate is framed too narrowly as protection versus vermin. The choice is not only between a protected animal and a pest. Many countries manage abundant species through a third category — managed wildlife — where the animal is not endangered but the state retains responsibility for population control, conflict response and compensation. India’s 2022 rationalisation left no such category, so a species is either protected by the forest department or effectively nobody’s. The Shimla death is the cost of that missing middle.

Administrator's brainstorm