Wildlife menace forces Taplejung farmers to abandon ancestral villages

Relentless raids on crops by simians and black bears are making livelihoods increasingly impossible in mountain villages.

For years, Geeta Prasad Puri of ward 3 in Phungling Municipality tried every possible way to protect his crops in his ancestral village. He grew seasonal and off-season vegetables, built a makeshift shed on his farmland to guard against wild animals, and even experimented with alternative crops. But nothing worked. Finally, defeated by the relentless crop raids by monkeys and Himalayan black bears, he is mulling leaving the ancestral village for good.