The baboons are doomed, and welfare groups just missed the last chance to save them

Detailed summary

We have just seen the last opportunity for welfare organisations to gain a meaningful seat at the table and help decide how to keep baboons on the Cape Peninsula. Their donors had…

We have just seen the last opportunity for welfare organisations to gain a meaningful seat at the table and help decide how to keep baboons on the Cape Peninsula. Their donors had left money to save wild animals in exactly this kind of situation. Funding fences could have kept three troops, 88 animals, wild. Demonstrating that fences work could have helped save thousands more.

Dr David Gaynor, a conservation biologist and primatologist, holds a PhD in baboon foraging ecology and, with Dr Ruth Kansky, authored the first individual-based census and management plan for Cape Peninsula baboons. They developed the first management plan for baboons on the Peninsula, and their two-year trial of monitors on the Slangkop and Da Gama Park troops formed the basis of the monitor programme.

I have seen how quickly baboon monitors can move the entire Waterfall baboon troop to the top of the mountain above Simon’s Town and how effectively they can keep them there, out of town. I have seen monitors keep these baboons within the fenced grounds of the naval depot at the South African Naval Armament Depot (Sanad). And I have seen those same herding skills used to guide the baboons to the soccer field, where food was scattered and placed inside the traps.

For the first time, I have seen managers up on the mountain with the baboons. I have seen the Navy, the Cape Baboon Partnership, NCC, NGOs, vets and Metro Police share resources. I have seen film crews commissioned to record the capture. I would have liked the public to see what I saw on the mountain in the past few weeks. When the monitors kept the baboons out of town, I watched a wild troop behaving naturally, living its complex social life and playing its part in the mountain ecosystem. I saw a troop worth conserving.

I have seen the authorities obtain permits, meet environmental requirements, make arrangements with the Navy and overcome considerable public opposition.

They went on to fund a R10-million centre at Kogelfontein.

I keep…

I…

Opening of the article, excerpted from Daily Maverick. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.