Primates creating headaches for pineapple farmer in Orange Hill
Excerpt and Photo from barbadostoday.bb For the first time in the six years he has been farming, Devon Slater of Orange Hill, St James is faced with a monkey problem. The green, furry primates have been raiding his small pineapple farm causing him significant financial losses. Slater, 64, tells Barbados TODAY the attacks only started last week and three to four fruits are either eaten, bitten or destroyed daily. Although the losses are discouraging, he says he is implementing strategies to fight back against the monkeys. Slater has been growing thousands of pineapples at the edge of a gully near his home for all these years and never experienced a monkey attack, given that the primates usually live in forested areas. But the increasingly warm climate could be affecting the traditional food supply of the monkeys and scouting around for a new food source could have led to the discovery of his farm, he suggests. “They come in the morning between 7 and 7:30 and they come in a group of 20 or more. Some hang around in the top of the trees and others stay down bottom. The ones down bottom come and start to eat and the ones at the top that you don’t see, then come and join them,” he says.
