Editor
I’M with Mr Prangley. The monkeys in Durban North are a menace.
Like it or not, their former habitat is gone, and in a lot of cases that happened a long time ago. You can’t get over a real, ongoing problem by simply telling people to basically ‘suck it up’ because you feel us humans caused the problem in the first place. The fact of the matter is that large numbers of monkeys – and a lot of them are territorial and growing in size – now live in residential areas where people want to be able to enjoy their properties without being constantly tormented by monkeys.
They are impossible neighbours. They are unable to co-exist with humans at any level. Forget about scavenging, which is a real pain and leads to unhygienic litter left lying around, the mayhem they cause in gardens and houses they break into is widespread. As Mr Prangley states, after a rampage through a property you often have damage to phone lines, resident bird life is badly affected plus all the other problems he has listed.
Very often you get factions within groups fighting each other as well – it’s chaos all round. Something needs to be done to resolve what is a festering situation – we don’t need a constant stream of letters on the subject. After all, we live in Africa for goodness’ sake – surely we have enough eco-experts and conservationists to come up with some kind of solution that addresses the problems we have.
Otherwise, sad to say, letters reporting cruel and vicious acts carried out by frustrated and angry residents will continue to appear in your paper.
Al Gledhill
La Lucia
