By: Mariama Njie
Monkeys in the tourism development area (TDA) are now roaming Bijilo to look for food which the park’s officials had linked the act to low turnout of tourists and visitors to the parks where the monkeys can easily get food and flock with people.
The not visiting of tourists and visitors to any of the parks is due to none arrival of tourists due to the Coronavirus pandemic that is tearing things apart throughout the world.
The Bijilo Forest Park one of the busiest parks in The Gambia that tourists normally visit was established in 1951 at the southern end of Senegambia Beach. It’s a popular tourist attraction and educational aid. There are three species of monkeys who live there, the Green velvet Monkeys, and the shyer western red colobus monkey.
Musukebba Jabang, Assistant Manager of the park told The Voice Newspaper that: “the Covid-19 pandemic has caused havoc and loneliness in the lives of the monkeys as they are very curious and friendly to human. She believed that one of the reasons why some of the monkeys go outside in search for food could be “because they are so used to supplementary feeding, the tourists have made them used to supplement foods often times when they visit the park, they give them lollypop, sugar, biscuit and bananas.”
“And now that there is no tourist coming, the monkeys are no more seeing those supplement foods they were used to eating, they go nearby homes in search of food but that doesn’t mean that we lose the forest or something else,” she added.
She said that they restricts feeding of supplement food but they cannot stop it, adding “because often times when we give order to the tourist not to feed them with supplementary food, some put food in their bags and later give it to the monkeys which we cannot control.”
Madam Janbang lamented that it is as a result of the pandemic, they sit the whole day at the park without seeing any single tourist and the monkeys will usually go out to the hotels when they didn’t see any visitors.
Meanwhile, she also stated that mangoes been other reasons why they go to houses “monkeys like mangoes although we have tried to plant mangoes but it doesn’t work simply because they will eat that mango right from its flowering stage, so maybe that could be the reason why they also go houses in search for mangoes and bananas. Every year we do national tree planting normally organize by the Standard Charted Bank’s greenhouse initiative or sometimes by Forestry Department.”
She stressed that their revenue base is totally down but as a civil servant they must come to work and closed by around 5 and 6pm.
However, she said currently, they have a philanthropist from the Netherland who used to visit the pack and realized that the tourist turnout is always low, so she decided to buy bags of groundnut by sending money to one of the pack attendances.
They are being feed with groundnut three times per day everyday therefore feeding is not a problem, she said.
