Baboons have revealed their hand, and that’s why a sanctuary is the best option

I first encountered the Waterfall troop in 2007. They were sitting in the sun at Happy Valley Home, having just enjoyed a breakfast of stale doughnuts with the residents. The manager, Mrs Dolly, had asked us (the Baboon Research Unit at UCT) to visit because the baboons were, in her opinion, “getting a bit too friendly”.“Too friendly” meant taking food out of people’s hands rather than waiting for a handout, entering the tiny kitchen during meal preparation time and entering the dormitories to search for food. In Mrs Dolly’s opinion all these behaviours were becoming more frequent and the baboons more assertive.Mrs Dolly’s fears were ultimately justified. In 2010 a large male entered the men’s dormitory and grabbed a bag of sugar. In the ensuing chase the baboon pushed over an elderly man who fell off an elevated walkway and subsequently died of his injuries.While clearly an accident, this incident highlights the untenable situation of humans and baboons sharing urban space. Baboon-proofing of doors and windows ensued but the baboons always found a way around these obstacles because their efficacy depends on human behaviour. Having baboons in urban areas never ends well and it is usually the baboon being assigned the death certificate.In 2007 there was no management of baboons in Simons Town. It was to each their own in a lose-lose battle of wits and vigilance against agility, power and persistence. The Simon’s Town Civic Association did its best with a limited budget to scare baboons away from urban areas, but conflict remained chronic. At a town hall meeting in 2009 the atmosphere was hostile and decidedly anti-baboon, with a request for the CapeNature representative to “catch the lot and truck them to the Overberg or further” receiving the most effusive applause of the night. In 2010 the first management efforts upset the Waterfall troop’s daily meandering through town and provided a brief reprieve for businesses, the navy and residents. But as visiting Professor Shirley Strum warned, “the damage was already done”. Strum, who has dedicated her working life to understanding baboons, warned that habituated baboons would be impossible to deter from urban landscapes with high rewards relative to natural habitat. She recommended that the troop be culled, stating that they were the worst-behaved baboons she had ever encountered. Despite this the authorities invested tens of millions of rands from 2010 to 2026 trying to deter the troop with non-lethal methods. Rangers would deploy new tools and for a few weeks would enjoy success in keeping the troop outside of the urban edge.But the baboons always returned, having habituated to the new tool and not having forgotten the myriad food rewards in town that will always beat Sandstone fynbos, with its low nutrition in addition to tannins and other “do not eat me” compounds.Consequently, human-induced injuries and deaths have been the norm for the Waterfall troop. Broken bones from falling off buildings, gunshots, electrocutions and dog bites fill the column of “causes of death”. Rotten teeth, infected gums, blindness and hair loss paint an equally poor health picture of an urban primate’s lifestyle. For residents it is damaged cars and houses, stressed and injured dogs, damaged gardens, direct (consumed) and indirect (soiled) loss of food, exposure to pathogens and both anxiety and trauma associated with pending and previous baboon intrusions. Together these damages equate to depreciation of property value, increased time to sell properties in baboon-impacted areas and deep conflict among neighbours on how best to deal with the damages wrought by baboons and those who seek to encourage them to visit their properties. There are, of course, many who enjoy watching baboons navigate urban areas and I can understand this as they bring a level of humorous anarchy to linear urban architecture and juxtapose our constrained urban lifestyles with some refreshingly basic biology. However, it only takes one “in-person” experience of extreme suffering from a gunshot or vehicle accident for the romance and spectacle of wildlife in town to transform into a nightmare that requires a rude awakening, and the need for a new plan to manage the human-baboon interface. Managing wildlife in human-dominated landscapes is always contentious because of the diversity of values, attitudes and beliefs among stakeholders. There can never be one management option that satisfies all stakeholders and thus reasonable compromise is at the heart of any inclusive management decision.Stakeholders are informed through both written documents and oral engagement with the relevant authorities and experts. Positions are stated and opposition to plans or aspects thereof are recorded and responded to with the goal of ensuring clarity, providing further justification and, where appropriate, changing the plans. The above process has recently been completed for the Cape Peninsula, and the result has been the finalisation of both the Cape Peninsula Baboon Strategic Management Plan and the subsequent Action Plan that provides a roadmap for implementation.Experts with skills in behavioural ecology, primatology, sanctuary management, wildlife biology and conservation were provided with data on the drivers of negative human-baboon interactions on the peninsula and the methods to date used to mitigate these. Among the experts there was strong support for both fencing (expensive but with success linked to topography, low public support) and culling (cost effective, limited welfare impacts, success guaranteed, but with strong public opposition) with less support for sanctuaries (expensive with welfare concerns) and translocation (welfare concerns, no suitable receiving environment, high costs to the receiving baboons). Following further stakeholder engagement culling was rejected in favour of non-lethal options and with translocation considered unviable (no suitable receiving environment), that left only fencing either to harden the urban edge or to provide a sanctuary from anthropogenic impacts. The deciding variable for which fencing option would be applied to which troops was topography. If fencing along the urban edge would force troops to live in marginal high-lying land, then research suggested the troops would simply move to the nearest unfenced low-lying suburb. In these cases, a sanctuary was the recommended outcome. For troops that would still have access to suitable low-lying habitat after fencing them out of urban areas, then hardening the urban edge became the best option, albeit an unpopular outcome for many residents who prefer an open border with Table Mountain National Park.Objections to these management decisions may range from process to principle and social media campaigns are used to promote petitions and publicise protests. While both are legitimate vehicles for expressing dissatisfaction, they invariably come with promotional propaganda. What is strongly evident at present is that members of the public who never engaged with the proposed plans and responses are divorced from the original arguments that have led to specific management decisions. Such people are vulnerable to mis- and disinformation campaigns and would benefit from a fact check.Unfortunately, facts are largely impervious to people who have already digested alarmist disinformation. Disinformation, which refers to false information that is deliberately produced to cause harm, is invariably alarmist and has been shown to push hot psychological buttons that facts simply cannot compete with.And so it is that a baboon sanctuary which will provide a safe place where baboons with poor welfare and health can be fed and cared for has been labelled both a “concentration camp” and a “death centre” while being offered up as evidence of authorities that do not care.Yet it is precisely because the City, SANParks and CapeNature do care and were prepared to compromise on lethal options during stakeholder engagements, that these baboons have been given a safe space with both food and shelter. In a city with a large population of homeless and hungry humans, a failure to acknowledge the significance of this decision suggests a deep disconnect with the fiscal challenges of managing urban infrastructure for about five million people. Deadly status quoEvery citizen of Cape Town is complicit in having deprived baboons and other wildlife of critical resources. We share the cause of the problem through our need for roads, railways, airports, hospitals, schools and shopping centres in addition to our homes and the factories that supply them with goods. All these structures require land which animals depended on.If you genuinely care for baboon welfare and health, then you cannot possibly support a continuation of the status quo which means leaving the Waterfall and Seaforth troops in Simon’s Town or the two troops in Constantia. To do so is to guarantee more suffering and premature human-induced deaths.Enormous resources have now been allocated to fence all four troops into natural habitat away from the harms of humans. For the Waterfall and Seaforth troops the size of the fenced area is admittedly small but the rewards are enormous – access to nutritionally balanced human-derived foods and shelter, two resources they currently risk life and limb to attain.I too wanted a fence around Simon’s Town but through the process of engagement and compromise I accepted the arguments against it, namely: a) it was too expensive relative to the risk of failure, b) it was not possible to build within reasonable timeframes (estimate of two years) and c) there is low support from residents living along the affected urban edge. Then, of course, there is what the baboons want. From my first encounter with the Waterfall troop 19 years ago munching on doughnuts, they have shown an unwavering desire to disconnect from fynbos and to live and eat in an urban area. There is not a single conservation authority or expert who would not prefer it if the baboons on the peninsula behaved more like caracal – out of sight, out of town and much more part of the natural ecology. However, these baboons have shown us their hand, and it would prefer to be in our cookie jar, despite the health and welfare risks of doing so. A sanctuary will undoubtedly satisfy their primary desires of ample, easy-to-digest food and a safe place to sleep, groom, play and yes, one day die. Death is part of living and so the goal is to ensure a good quality of life before a death free from suffering. A sanctuary will provide both. DM