Monkeys caused at least 850 million yen worth of damage to Japan's agricultural produce during fiscal 1999, an animal protection body said in a survey released Wednesday.
Indeed, the figure may even have surpassed the 1 billion yen mark since around 40 percent of the cities, towns and villages surveyed provided no statistics, the group said.
Results of the survey, conducted by the All Life In a Viable Environment (ALIVE) organization, show that nearly 20 percent of local autonomous bodies used exterminatory methods to get rid of monkeys, without taking any nonfatal preventive measures, such as setting up fences.