How perception of local people towards rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) can influence on decisionmaking of humanmacaque conflict mitigation?

A field study was conducted to investigate perception of local people towards conservation of macaques and possible mitigation strategies can be opted to reduce humanmacaque conflict in urban landscape. Questionnaire survey was designed to collect qualitative and quantitative information including 608 respondents in and around AsolaBhatti Wildlife Sanctuary, India during 20162017. Our study result showed that there were 21 groups of rhesus macaques available in the study area and caused severe damage to the nearby localities and harassed a total of 466 numbers of individuals. Maximum number of conflict incidences (n=502) were recorded from Sanjay Colony, Bhatti mines area, designated as Site 1 due to maximum availability of food and shelter, large troop size (3540 individuals) and lack of knowledge of local people. Minimum number of conflict incidences (n=157) were recorded from Surajkund area, designated as Site 7 despite of having multiple food resources because of small troop size (1520 individuals) and conservation awareness of local people. In this study, we compared sociocultural aspect of selected locations of study area, socioeconomic characteristics of two extreme respondent groups from site 1 and site 7 and also distinguished different age groups of respondents and compared their opinion on mitigation of conflict in urban situation. In the conclusion, it can be said that attitude and perception of local people can contribute in conservation of rhesus macaques and in reducing risk of negative association during conflict. Perception of local people can be helpful in decision making and policy implementation in urban monkey population management.