Wildlife workers battled to catch hundreds of macaques that escaped their enclosure and invaded a police station in Thailand.

Staff from the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation were sent to round up the rampaging monkeys that took over Lopburi at the weekend.

The animals had clawed their way through the weathered cage netting at the Pho Kao Ton Monkey Nursery on November 16 evening, before converging on the nearby Tha Hin Police Station where police were forced to barricade themselves inside.

Video shows wildlife officers scrambling across town to catch the primates, seen in the video perched on homes around the monkey nursery. They shot the monkeys with tranquiliser darts and laid out traps with fruit to lure the fugitive primates inside.

Authorities said on Sunday, November 17, that the damaged enclosure had been repaired. More than 100 macaques voluntarily returned to the nursery, where a local Buddhist temple usually holds food offering ceremonies for them.

The Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation said personnel were rounding up the rogue macaques still on the loose. They expect to catch the monkeys in three days.

Lopburi has been overrun with monkeys, partly due to their religious significance in Thai culture, and because of unregulated tourist feeding practices that have allowed them to thrive.

Though the wild monkeys have become a tourist attraction, their soaring numbers have created an unsafe environment for the locals, who complain about the increasing conflict as more macaques encroach into human settlements.

Lopburi authorities have teamed up with the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation to address the issue through sterilisation and relocation.