Member of Parliament (MP) for Nee Soon Group Representation Constituency, Louis Ng, speaking to the radio station 938LIVE said that he intends to use politics as a platform to continue his work with animals and effect change at a higher level.
Mr Ng who is the founder and Executive Director of ACRES, a charity dedicated to animal welfare, was responding to the announcement of Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA) that close to 630 monkeys were culled AVA last year.
Referring to the culling of monkeys to deal with complaints by residents Mr Ng said that it is not an effective method because “it just reduces the troop size for a little while”.
“A lot of times, when they trap the monkeys, they are trapping the younger ones – the babies who haven’t learnt. What we find is that biologically, without a doubt, the mothers will breed again,” he said.
“If we do cull the whole troop of monkeys, another troop will just take over the area. Unless we are really determined to kill all 1,800 monkeys or so, within one or two months, wipe out the whole population in Singapore completely, there is really no effective way of culling them at this point,” Mr Ng added.
The MP who feels that culling 600 monkeys , also questioned AVA’s reliance on private contractors to do the culling. He asked how much money AVA gives out to such private contractors, and suggested that the money can be used on finding more humane solutions like fencing up the areas to ensure that monkeys have little access to it.
“The monkey probably doesn’t know that it’s entering the house, the only thing they are seeing is the food. That’s the stimulus. Remove the stimulus and the monkeys will go away. It’s happened for residents in Thomson. I spoke to them, found that when they put up the grilles, made sure that the monkeys have no access to food, the monkeys naturally leave,” said Mr Ng.
Saying that he intends to raise this during the upcoming Committee of Supply debates, Mr Ng said, “now I’m trying to push for more policy changes in the way we handle the human and wildlife conflict. I will ask more questions on whether culling is a solution. Asking the parliamentary question (is) just a first step.”
culling would not be an effective method to curb such complaints, and he intends to raise this during the upcoming Committee of Supply debates.
