Over the past two years SANParks, CapeNature and perhaps other conservation bodies, displaying a remarkable lack of foresight and common sense, have put themselves directly in the metaphorical firing line of Cape Town’s most factually challenged and emotionally manipulative community and non-profit organisations, Parkscape and Baboon Matters Trust (BMT) – both of which proved themselves thoroughly disingenuous “inglorious entities” in the aftermath of the 2015 Muizenberg Fire.
(For more on Parkscape, see my earlier entries on this blog.)
SANParks, which was hauled over the coals earlier this year by a majority judgement of the Supreme Court of Appeal for not consulting the public before undertaking the clear felling of MTO Forestry’s Tokai pine plantation, displays not only shortsightedness in the wake of that decision; it shows itself, within the bounds of Table Mountain National Park (TMNP), to be either incapable or fearful of communicating anything at all.
What has caused these two prestigious conservation organisations’ fall from grace? How have they brought about a situation where their continued stewardship of our wildlife and wild spaces can be called into question? More, how have they, through their own stupidity, endangered hard-won wildlife management practices and structures, particularly those pertaining to the Cape Peninsula’s baboon troops?
Silence.
That’s it and that is all of it. Silence. Given the lack of communication by officialdom and the flak catchers it employs to liaise with the public and its recognised representative organisations, it’s not unreasonable to suspect that SANParks and CapeNature choose to operate under a cloak of silence and secrecy tantamount to conspiracy. It appears they choose not to consult the public and, if they deem it necessary, they do not consult their partner organisations on bodies designed to facilitate a free flow of information between those bodies and the public they serve.
The latest self-inflicted wound to afflict SANParks and CapeNature was caused by the latter granting, in October 2017, two normally uncontroversial hunting licences to farmers in the winelands of the Constantia Valley. Seven raiding baboons were subsequently shot and killed by a hunter employed by the Klein Constantia wine farm before Karen Watkins of the Constantiaberg Bulletin brought the culling to public attention.
A measure of how seriously (or lightly) one should take mainstream media reports on this matter is highlighted by this report in The Sunday Times, Call for wine boycott as tipsy baboons are shot dead.
Then, despite both permit holders stating they would not make further use of the licences entitling them to hunt up to two baboons a day, all hell broke loose.
BMT, perhaps the most nefarious and counterproductive non-profit wildlife conservation organisation you could hope to encounter (it gives individual baboons human names and refers to them as one would to a domesticated pet, i.e. as “little boys” or “little girls”), has called on Capetonians to support several other organisations; Cape Town Unites for Animals (CTUFA), the Milnerton-based Beauty Without Cruelty (BWC), Voices for African Wildlife (VFAW) and Talking Tree in protest action at The Constantia Village shopping mall on Saturday 14 July 2018.
It should be a colourful spectacle but, ultimately, it will amount to nothing more than a claque of well-heeled Capetonians waving graphic placards to warm themselves on a mid-winter morn. However, even such a ludicrous ‘protest’ might do much to further undermine public trust in the City (itself embroiled in housing-development scandals), SANParks and CapeNature.
BWC and its supporting organisations make no bones about how they feel about the culling of baboons – the organisation’s graphics speak for themselves (although the sloganeering appears a tad tired).
What role do CapeNature and SANParks play in this dance of dunces?
CapeNature issued the hunting permits (farmers culling rogue baboons is accepted practice countrywide) and the baboons, shot on private land, belong to troops whose home ranges fall within TMNP, managed by SANParks. More important, as members of what is known as the Baboon Technical Team (BTT), CapeNature and SANParks play an integral role in managing and maintaining the wellbeing of the most pampered baboon troops on Earth (R25 000 is spent by the City on each baboon each year).
It would seem, therefore, that any protest must be caused by their actions (or lack thereof) in this regard. But it’s complicated, as they like to say on Facebook (or wherever it was that little meme transformed itself into a trope). Let’s have a look at the background to this largely manufactured fracas.
Background to the Baboon Issue
The following gives a detailed-but-succinct background to baboon management on the Cape Peninsula:
Baboons and conflict on the Cape Peninsula, South Africa
The Cape Peninsula baboon population (ca. 500 individuals in 16 troops, ranging across 250km²)is isolated by Cape Town’s surrounding infrastructure. Being adaptive generalists, baboons have both survived the transformation of their habitat and thrived because of access to human-derived food, elimination of predators and protective management.
Conflict over baboons has occurred since the early 1600s when baboons first sought human-associated foods in gardens used to grow produce. With increasing human population troops have lost access to preferred foraging areas and hence the potential for interaction is greater.
Management authorities have attempted to reduce human-baboon interaction by educating residents, baboon-proofing waste and using ‘baboon field rangers’ who attempt to reduce contact between humans and baboons using aversive methods. When methods fail, a baboon may be euthanised in accordance with a ‘raiding baboon protocol’, derived from scientific and public participation.
Raiding behaviour and the removal of habitual raiders fuels human-human conflict on the Cape Peninsula. Managers argue that they have a legal mandate to protect the health, safety and well-being of residents by euthanising baboons when aversion fails. Opposition to ‘anthropocentric management’ is largely based on the perception by animal rights groups that euthanasia threatens population viability and the rights of the baboon. Raiding is seen as a natural consequence of the baboon’s loss of preferred havitat and the incentives provided by human negligence(e.g. leaving doors and windows open and poor waste management). for the most part these ‘baboon activists’ promote the ideas that baboons share space with humans and the two primates can coexist peacefully despite the obvious health and welfare costs to humans and baboons. Moreover, they state that humans should be punished for creating opportunity for baboons through neglect.
Research began in the 1960s on the foraging ecology of wild troops living within remote areas of the Peninsula. By the late 1990s, increased interactions with humans resulted in a report about baboon population status and possible solutions to reduce interactions. The low numbers, highly skewed sex ratio (few adult males), high levels of human-induced injury and mortality and the possibility that the population may be genetically and/or behaviourally unique (i.e. marine foraging) were used as arguments to confer ‘protected status’ on the population.
Baboon field rangers were used in 1999 to chase two of the world raiding troops away from urban areas. Government authorities, consultants, members of the public and NGOs formed the Baboon Management Team (BMT). The BMT devised management plans and a strategy document which included an option to euthanise baboons that posed risks to humans.
Despite these positive changes, conflict escalated. In 2002, University of Cape Town researchers determined that baboons had decreased; the sex ratio was still strongly female-biased, human-induced mortality was high and baboons in the two ‘managed’ troops were habitual raiders. The BMT, an excellent example of participatory planning in conservation conflict, was paralysed by polemics and monthly meetings were heated affairs with no consensus derived. Proposed management strategies were not being implemented by the service provider responsible for daily management of baboons and there was no pure or applied research in progress to lead management discussions away from the largely subjective and emotive discours.
Against this background, the University of Cape Town Baboon Research Unit was formed to provide data essential to understanding the causes, consequences and possible solutions to the conflict.It commenced with population-level assessments of space use and behaviour of troops across diverse habitats. It assessed population health and the efficacy of methods to reduce human-baboon interactions. These data were disseminated to management authorities and greatly empowered the authorities’ ability to make informed and defensible management decisions.
In 2010 the BMT was replaced by two new organisations, the Baboon Technical Team (BTT) and the Baboon Liaison Group (BLG). The BTT is comprised of city, provincial and national conservation authorities and has assumed full responsibility for short- and long-term management. The BLG is comprised of civic representatives from affected communities and is responsible for liaising between residents and the BTT. The two groups meet regularly to facilitate communication and interaction. Against the background of these improved decision-making structures supported by science, the City of Cape Town increased the budget for managing baboons from approximately US$10,000/annum to US$1 million, which enabled management of all 11 troops (up from 6).
Since these changes were effected, injuries and deaths suffered by baboons declined by > 50%. In 2012, noise and pain aversion methods were included in the management protocol, which together with improved management structures has resulted in unprecedented levels of conflict mitigation. Most troops are kept out of urban areas > 95% of the time with fencing attaining 100% success over a 1-year period. Together this equates improved welfare and conservation status for baboons and the programme was rewarded with a public endorsement by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (NSPCA). The alignment of national, provincial and city conservation managers, academic researchers, civilian representatives and animal welfare organisations under a single management umbrella has resulted in greatly reduced human-baboon interaction and as a direct consequence has largely defused the human-human conflict on the Peninsula.
M Justin O’Riain in S.M. Redpath, R.J. Gutiérrez, K.A. Wood, J.C. Young (Eds) Conflicts in Conservation: Navigating Towards Solutions Cambridge University Press 2015 pp 301-2
Professor O’Riain’s above article was summarised and incorporated into page 123 of The Cape Aflame – Cape Town’s Dance with Fire (2015):
Thirty years of research into the foraging behaviour across the wildland Urban Interface by the Cape Peninsula baboon troops resulted in a range of governmental and civic organisations forming the Baboon Management Team (BMT). In 1999, it introduced baboon field rangers to monitor two of the Park’s most notorious troops.
By 2002, the BMT was “paralysed by polemics” and heated monthly meetings during which consensus was seldom achieved. The baboon troops were worse off than before. The University of Cape Town then established the Baboon Research Unit (BRU) “to provide data essential to understanding the causes, consequences and possible solutions to the conflict” between city dwellers and their raucous neighbours.
In 2010, the BRU’s work enabled local, provincial and national conservation authorities to form the Baboon Technical Team (BTT), which took over the short and long-term management of our baboon troops.
Members include the City of Cape Town – the Environmental Resource Management Department of which funds and implements its Baboon Management Programme through Human Wildlife Solutions (HWS) – and its partners, which include the Cape of Good Hope SPCA, SANParks, the SA Navy and CapeNature. The BTT meets regularly with the members of the Baboon Liaison Group (BLG), ensuring interaction with affected communities.
So presumably the above-mentioned members of the BTT and the BLG were informed of a deviation from the normal and agreed-to method of culling, which is to identify rogue baboons and have them euthanased by the Cape of Good Hope SPCA (CoGH SPCA) at its premises in Grassy Park?
No. The BTT reportedly did not inform the CoGH SPCA of CapeNature granting hunting licences and, for all we know, it left HWS out of the loop as well. It certainly did not advise the BLG of what was bound to be an inflammatory and publicly contentious deviation from normal practice.
How can we assume the City was informed?
Together with SANParks and CapeNature, the City is a member of what is known as the Baboon Conservation Authorities (BCA). The BCA (at first blush it appears to consist of the BTT without the South African Navy (SAN), HWS and the CoGH SPCA) described its remit in July 2011:
The three authorities involved in baboon management on the Cape Peninsula, namely South African National Parks, the City of Cape Town and CapeNature – also known as the Baboon Conservation Authorities (BCA), have adopted a protocol to address the management of raiding baboons in municipal areas on the Cape Peninsula. This protocol guides both long term management plans and short term interventions to reduce the frequency and severity of raiding behaviour that is considered to be a threat to human health and safety and may result in damage to property.
Aha! The BCA might therefore decide hunting to be preferable to euthanasia without consulting the BTT, BLG or its partners and service providers?
No. The BCA must, in its own words, ensure:
…that both qualitative and quantitative data are recorded so that all management decisions relevant to raiding baboons can be subject to an independent assessment by recognised wildlife management experts, local and international researchers with relevant expertise and elected civic representatives living on the Peninsula (i.e. the Baboon Liaison Group which is made up of representatives from the Constantia Property Owners Association, Scarborough Residents & Ratepayers Association, Kommetjie Residents & Ratepayers Association, Misty Cliffs Village Association, Ocean View Civic Association and the Simon’s Town Civic Association). Lastly, it was considered essential that management decisions concerning the future of specific raiding baboons should be deliberated by experienced wildlife managers (i.e CapeNature’s Wildlife Advisory Committee – WAC) that themselves are not directly affected by raiding on the Peninsula.
In other words, the BCA is subservient to the BTT-BLG dynamic and what we have is an undertaking that “all management decisions relevant to raiding baboons” will be subject, on an individual basis if necessary, to assessment by numerous civic bodies as well as CapeNature’s Wildlife Advisory Committee (WAC).
Did either the BTT or BCA follow the channels of communication available to them when agreeing to the issue of hunting licences in a situation it knew had the potential to ignite outrage from a privileged, but intellectually malnourished, elite? No, neither did so.
This breach of protocol or conspiracy of secrecy is not a small issue. It is a large issue and one that could undermine the public’s faith not only in the authorities charged with the Peninsula troops’ wellbeing, but in their past, present and future adherence to published protocols.
Public Perception Skewed by BMT Misinformation
On the Peninsula a baboon that has become aggressive in its attempt to secure food from humans is not exempt from being put down and every management document produced since 1998 has included the option to euthenase raiding baboons.
Professor M Justin O’Riain April 2011
What is the public doing about this failure to communicate? Is it taking these organisations to task for a breach of protocol or for conspiring to keep a deviation from protocol secret?
No. Motivated by BMT and hijacked by cockamamie feel-good organisations of the hare-brained type that went out of date with Brigitte Bardot and Raquel Welch’s fur bikini in the 1970s, it (by way of the organisations mentioned above) is reigniting and mounting a vociferous campaign against the culling of baboons – a standard and accepted practice among conservation authorities around the country and worldwide.
Talk about missing the point. The misguided fools running or supporting these half-baked “conservation” organisations’ protest on Saturday will have missed the key issue – which is transparency. And they will have missed it absolutely. Then again, their Facebook pages show that fact, truth and transparency do not rank high in their list of moral priorities.
Be that as it may, a 20-year-od culling protocol is not the issue. An uncommunicated deviation from established practice, in contravention of the published protocol, to one that is bound to upset the mink-and-manure set living cheek by jowl with the baboons and our wine farms, is the issue.
So what or who the hell is BMT anyway?
Baboon Matters Trust (BMT) was a key member of the Baboon Management Team and provided monitoring services to the City until the latter “acrimoniously” terminated its contract in 2010. BMT is the party primarily responsible for the Baboon Management Team being “paralysed by polemics” as far back as 2002 and it is the group cited by Professor O’Riain as the service provider that failed to implement daily baboon-management strategies proposed by the body.
Such practices might well have included euthanasia.
Following termination of its monitoring services on the Cape Peninsula, BMT set itself up as a body opposing any actions undertaken by the authorities to establish science-based management protocols – and it has been vociferous in its faith-based criticism of current structures and practices. In its 2009/2010 report, it addresses its loss of the monitoring contract:
Baboons have become a political issue and their management has become the centre of many controversies. Having originated sensible procedures for Baboon Management over 10 years ago, Jenni Trethowan and the team at Baboon Matters lost the contract to manage the project over a year ago amid acrimonious circumstances.
…and positions itself as a body opposed to any organisation or management structure that might succeed it:
I have spent the last five months embroiled in trying to understand the workings of local government. Although I intend to engage in building relationships with all concerned and the Trust will offer its expertise and services to local management, I believe that using the resources of the Trust in attempting to influence Baboon management in this area is futile.
Baboon Matters Trust Progress Report 2009-2010
(BMT recently removed all published reports bar its 2017 Annual Report from its website.)
Let’s be quite clear here by repeating the above. The following has, for the past eight years, been BMT’s publicly stated position on baboon management on the Cape Peninsula:
I believe that using the resources of the Trust in attempting to influence Baboon management in this area is futile.
The skewing of public perception
BMT, which is afforded regular coverage by our skills-gutted media houses, comprises an organisation opposing the scientific findings of UCT’s BRU in conjunction with Swansea University. The BRU leads research into baboon behaviour and much can be learned by reading the following related articles, papers and theses:
- Tracking collars uncover the secrets of baboons’ raiding tactics
- The Effects of Extreme Seasonality of Climate and Day Length on the Activity Budget and Diet of Semi-commensal Chacma Baboons (Papio ursinus) in the Cape Peninsula of South Africa
- The spatial ecology of chacma baboons (Papio ursinus) in the Cape Peninsula, South Africa: Towards improved management and conservation strategies
- Survey of Infections Transmissible Between Baboons and Humans, Cape Town, South Africa
- Home range utilization by chacma baboon (Papio ursinus) troops on Suikerbosrand Nature Reserve, South Africa
- A Low-Cost Manipulation of Food Resources Reduces Spatial Overlap Between Baboons (Papio ursinus) and Humans in Conflict
- Foraging Profile, Activity Budget and Spatial Ecology of Exclusively Natural-Foraging Chacma Baboons (Papio ursinus) on the Cape Peninsula, South Africa
BMT further opposes the BTT’s separation of humans in urban areas from wild animals whose home ranges fall within the limited bounds of TMNP but which forage in urban areas encroaching on their natural habitat, the nutrient-rich lowlands. “Walking tours” formed a specific feature of BMT’s “Why can’t we all get along” view of baboon management and, until 2010 and for a fee, it would take the public into the park, guide them to baboon troops overseen by its monitors, and encourage them to mingle with the baboons.
Our walking with baboons tours are attracting a wide range of interest and it was a most interesting experience to take Katie Couric of CBS News for a walk as she attracted so much attention from American visitors. It was gratifying to take well known South African actress Sandra Prinsloo walking as she loved the experience and supports our cause and the baboons.
Baboon Matters Trust Progress Report 2009-2010
On its current website, BMT fondly recalls its “Walking Tours”:
Although a change in policy by the City of Cape Town resulted in our Walking Tours with Baboons being stopped in 2011, we still get regular requests for these tours. Our Walks were incredibly popular, and many hundreds of people developed a deeper appreciation for baboons as a result, but we are unfortunately not allowed to offer them anymore.
The disturbance by humans of wild animals in their natural environment flies in the face of any and all sound conservation practices – yet BMT, having alienated members of the BTT (a high-level member of which told me that BMT has done “nothing good for baboons anywhere, least of all on the Peninsula”), continues to use these “walks” to shape perceptions and solicit funds and sympathy for its self-serving cause which, as you’ve probably guessed, is to perpetuate its funded existence long after its services were terminated.
It goes further. On the same page as fond recollections of “Walking Tours” are highlighted, BMT states:
For 16 years Baboon Matters has been at the forefront of baboon conservation – in the face of ever-increasing urbanization and intensive agriculture, and the resulting escalation in baboon/human conflict.
This is more than gross misrepresentation – it is a blatant lie easily exposed, as it itself admits, by BMT refusing to work with the relevant authorities and allegedly being excluded from conservation management by those authorities.
On its Advocacy page, it proclaims:
We provide the oversight required to ensure that baboons are properly protected in terms of the law, and that the law is implemented effectively.
Parliament and, by extension, the public provides the required oversight of statutory bodies – nobody else. And the law makes provision for both culling and hunting.
So, for want of oversight of specious statements that cannot be substantiated, BMT continues to lead a gullible section of the public – fed horribly skewed perceptions – up the proverbial garden path.
BMT’s Propaganda Methodology
If it walks and talks like a propagandist…well, you know the answer to that one – BMT’s Jenni Trethowan is no conservationist; she’s an accomplished propagandist.
In July 2015, following the devastating wildfires that took place in March, BMT posted the following video to YouTube and the Web. It remains accessible on BMT’s current website by way of a link to an Africa Geographic article stating:
The City of Cape Town veterinarians, SANParks and City of Cape Town firefighters, baboon rangers from the service providers (HWS) as well as animal welfare specialists (Cape of Good Hope SPCA and Four Paws International) were all working in the Tokai Forests during the fires.
On account of the dangers of smoke, burning logs and falling trees, the Tokai Forests were closed to the public during the fire and sign posts to this effect were immediately erected by SANParks in the aftermath of the fire. By Saturday March 7, signposts were erected on all major access routes into the Tokai Forests and SANParks rangers were stopping all unauthorised personnel from entering the forests.
Members of BMT, which has stated its unwillingness to use “the resources of the Trust in attempting to influence Baboon management in this area”, are – if nothing else – members of the public and, like the rest of us, should not be afforded access to such restricted areas. BMT would have you believe otherwise.
…and, in February 2017, followed it with another:
Note the phrasing used in the first video. Very little is stated directly (that which is, is easily refuted or debunked as nonsense). Much is alleged and the video is rife with insinuation that the current service provider’s rangers, using paintball guns and in full sight of the many authorised personnel on the scene that night (see the Africa Geographic article linked to above), herded the baboons into the inferno, which then consumed them.
Any analysis or deconstruction of the language used in the first and second videos will reflect BMT’s communications strategy. It states nothing but insinuates everything, leaving its many ill-informed and over-emotive supporters to articulate these insinuations as fact and frame them on BMT’s and their own social-media pages and elsewhere as negligence on the part of the relevant authorities.
Leaving itself a measure of plausible deniability for having made such allegations has worked to now – but, with its latest action (the protest against culling a healthy, burgeoning baboon population planned for Saturday), it is time to call BMT’s bluff. It alone is responsible for the statements it is putting into its supporters’ mouths and onto their social-media platforms.
Such statements include BMT’s response on its Facebook page to Karen Watkins’s article in The Constantiaberg Bulletin:
I am absolutely gutted to confirm the below article. Permits have been issued and 7 baboons have been killed professional hunters (sic) hired by the vineyards (sic).
Of huge concern, is that in recent weeks there has been a great deal of “chatter” on social media reporting shootings, hearing shots in the Tokai/Constantia area, there are reports that a whole troops have been removed (sic) and reports of shootings at times when the professional hunters were reportedly not hunting the baboons.
We urgently need to see an updated census for the Constantia troops so that we can exactly (sic) how many baboons are missing.
We will report more as we get news in, but it seems that at a meeting of the Baboon Technical Team in 2017 the issue of removing baboons from the vineyards (killing them) was discussed and as the vineyards are privately owned they may apply for permits to remove damage causing (sic) animals.
Professional hunters? Whole troops being “removed”? How is this not inflammatory and emotive language designed to whip up hysteria among the dumb and dangerous who regularly contribute to or comment on posts made to this sorry page?
The Facts of the Matter
Six honours, three Masters theses, six PhD studies and two post-doctorates have contributed data to the Baboon Conservation Authorities (BCA) making baboons the best studied of all the Peninsula mammals and resulting in baboon management being the best informed by independent research of all current faunal management strategies on the Peninsula.
Professor M Justin O’Riain April 2011
A great five-year synopsis of baboon management on the Cape Peninsula (covering the years 2013-2017) is provided by the Living with Baboons – South African Baboon Forum site, which counts the Baboon Technical Team (including the City of Cape Town, Human Wildlife Solutions (HWS), CapeNature, SANParks and the SA Navy), the Baboon Liaison Group (BLG), the Cape Peninsula Baboon Research Unit (BRU), the Cape of Good Hope SPCA, the Knysna Baboon Action Group and the Knysna Municipality among its stakeholders. This broad overview covers – comprehensively – the myriad baboon-focused management initiatives under way or in the planning stages.
The above graphics are available in PDF here.
A simple fact, reflected in the above slides, deserves highlighting. Since its appointment as the City’s baboon management provider, Human Wildlife Solutions has presided over a 26% increase in the population of our troops – and nowhere has growth been more steady or consistent than in those troops prone to raiding the Constantia Valley wine farms, the Constantia I and II and Mountain troops (raids by the Constantia troop and haphazard vineyard management methods were noted in the first, August 2012 Human Wildlife Solutions Monthly Report).
Our baboons are indeed fortunate. Because we have hard-edged urban, rural and wildland divides on the Cape Peninsula, the Cape Peninsula baboon population (allocated an R11 million budget) is the most protected on Earth. The norm is revealed here:
Non-human primates, including Papio, have been widely used as models for human medical research. Historically, wild Chacma Baboons were sourced for medical research from within South Africa; However, this practice is now being discouraged, with captive-reared baboons being the preferred subjects for such research.
Across their global range, Chacma Baboons are also utilised for bushmeat and traditional medicine, although the extent and trends of this use are neither well documented nor well understood. They have been found in bushmeat markets in Johannesburg and the Eastern Cape, and are commonly traded at markets across KZN. Within the assessment region, we suspect neither the bushmeat nor traditional medicine trade make a significant negative impact on the population.
Finally, baboons are hunted both as trophies and for recreation, with minimal hunting restrictions. According to the CITES trade database, an average of 334 ± 67 baboons are hunted in the wild each year (2002–2012). Again, this is not suspected to impact the population negatively, although it may cause local subpopulation declines if not regulated.
Threats
The greatest threat to Chacma Baboons is conflict with humans for critical resources. Baboons (Papio) exhibit unrivalled levels of contact with humans when compared with other African primates and are considered the most troublesome genus in Africa. Although their notoriety may be more related to human perceptions than empirical data, there is abundant evidence throughout Africa that baboons cause more crop damage than any other African primate as well as all other wildlife species. They are reported as pests in Uganda, Nigeria, Cameroon, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi and South Africa. Across their distribution, Chacma Baboons are killed, legally and illegally, as damage-causing animals and also killed by indiscriminate trapping and poisoning. Although reports of retaliatory killing of baboons are generally anecdotal, the few quantified examples that exist demonstrate that targeted removal of baboons can range from the level of the individual to single or multiple troops numbering hundreds of animals.
The high levels of human–baboon spatial overlap and the resultant conflict seen throughout Africa is predicted to increase as human populations continue to expand and land development proliferates. Consequently, over time the benefits afforded to baboons by habitat alteration are likely to be exceeded by the deleterious consequences of chronic competition for space and food that manifests as direct conflict with humans. For example, Chacma Baboons in the Ugu region of KZN suffer direct competition for land (and its produce) that predominantly consists of sugar plantations. Local wildlife authority reports suggest that at least one of these subpopulations, which have been decreasing at a rate of approximately 10% per annum, will become extinct in the near future.
Hoffman T, Beamish E, Kaplan B, Lewis M, O’Riain MJ, Sithaldeen R, Stone O, 2016 A conservation assessment of Papio ursinus In Child MF, Roxburgh L, Do Linh San E, Raimondo D, Davies-Mostert HT (eds) The Red List of Mammals of South Africa, Swaziland and Lesotho South African National Biodiversity Institute and Endangered Wildlife Trust, South Africa
Human Wildlife Solutions offers comprehensive monthly reports on each of the 10 managed troops in its care (there are 16 troops throughout the greater metropole) and all facts pertaining to baboon management are set out in easy-to-understand graphs, graphics and images. The City offers a plethora of materials informing Capetonians how to live a baboon-safe lifestyle (yes, baboons are a lifestyle choice) and, subsequent to BMT’s ‘acrimonious’ dust-up with the City in 2010, it cannot be said that Capetonians are kept in the dark when it comes to baboon management.
While one pamphlet from the Baboon Technical Team tells it as it is, i.e. Irresponsible human behaviour spells a DEATH SENTENCE for BABOONS, another – treating us as it should, puts it more bluntly:
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Open in new tab Help us to keep our baboons safe and wild. Baboons that are fed by humans become aggressive and have to be shot.
How much more clearly does this simple 20-year-old consequence of foolish, unthinking, ignorant or indifferent behaviour have to be spelled out?
Yet, self-serving public “conservation” groups conflate the shooting of seven baboons in seven months on a wine estate to the production of “blood wine”. Surely the faces of protestors holding these placards will turn as scarlet as their chic posters and, one suspects, all-too-frequent glasses of red wine when they realise that most wine farmers shoot marauding or foraging animals? The Western Cape is wine country and countless baboons and other animals fall to bullets each year. The licences, as explained by CapeNature in the booklet provided hunters seeking a permit, regulate and control an activity that has the inherent potential, in some areas, to run out of control.
CapeNature is the regulator and not the facilitator of such activities.
The old adage of having to destroy the village in order to save it does not apply here. Several rogue individuals, thwarting every attempt to prevent them doing so, have raided vineyards and have been shot in situ to deter other members of their troops doing the same.
As Professor O’Riain points out to News24, shooting rogue baboons is not a perfect solution; “it is a distant second to non-lethal methods.” But, he adds, “We are all complicit – everything we eat comes at a cost to wildlife. We have broken almost every ecosystem and many now have to be actively managed if we want to balance food security with wildlife preservation.”
If protestors cannot realise or accept the veracity of Professor O’Riain’s last point, they should consider a brain scan. There is clearly something amiss either or both sides of the corpus collosum.
News24 also reports “the baboon population in the Tokai region had grown from about 180 to 260 in the last five years” – a 45% increase. As can be seen from the slides provided above by the City, our troops’ home ranges cover all the land available to them on the Peninsula. An uncontrolled increase in population, subject to human stupidity skewing adult male-female ratios, would have a decidedly negative effect on their wellbeing.
Our conservation bodies realise full well that euthanising individuals is not ideal. Let us return to Hoffman et al and A Conservation Assessment of Papio ursinus in Child et al’s The Red List of Mammals of South Africa, Swaziland and Lesotho, where this is spelled out:
Conservation
The greatest hindrance to Chacma Baboon conservation is conflict with humans, particularly in the agricultural sector. People experiencing this conflict have attempted to reduce it through various methods including: lethal removal, translocation, herding, a variety of deterrents, and food provisioning or diversionary feeding (outside of human areas; not to be confused with supplementary feeding). While few studies quantify the efficacy of these measures, the interventions most likely to succeed for high quality concentrated resources (for example, vineyards, citrus farms) are (in order of long-term effectiveness): baboon-specific electric fencing, dynamic noise (for example, bear bangers) and dynamic pain aversion (for example, paintball markers; Kaplan 2013) paired with the presence of field rangers (van Doorn 2009). It is critical to note that, when dealing with an animal as adaptable and intelligent as a baboon, any intervention will fail unless it is implemented conscientiously and adaptively. Where lethal control is practiced on either individual damage-causing animals or whole populations of damage-causing animals then best practice demands that the impacts of the removal on the sustainability of the population are assessed, and that the factors driving the conflict are addressed to reduce the need for long-term lethal control. Further, it is imperative that damage is correctly ascribed to particular individuals or troops if lethal control is to be effective and not impact on the population more broadly.
BMT has passed its sell-by date. By spreading propagandist misinformation on every media platform available to it, it is doing the Cape Peninsula’s baboon troops more harm than good.
Unless members of the public consciously choose to align themselves with BMT’s misrepresentations and its advocacy of practices anathema to sound, science-based conservation, they should distance themselves (as far as possible) from this disreputable, self-serving outfit.
Back to the Issue at Hand
On Tuesday 10 July, CapeTalk talkshow host Kieno Kammies asked CoGH SPCA Communications, Education and Resource Development Manager Belinda Abraham whether her organisation – a member of the Baboon Technical Team – was aware that CapeNature, itself a member of the BTT, had issued hunting permits to two wine farms on the Peninsula.
Her response?
The Cape of Good Hope SPCA has absolutely no knowledge of the active hunting of baboons and our understanding is that the strategy has always been to first exhaust the use of non-lethal methods. We received no notification that these had failed and that lethal methods would be or had been employed. And, in none of the reports that we’ve received (and these are reports that are publicly available on the HWS and CapeNature website – and these are reports that actually give updated monthly population figures of each troop) – and none of these reports that have been circulated actually give a record of, you know, baboon deaths as a result of permitted hunting.
…if these baboons were a threat to life and limb as they’ve suggested, then why weren’t these baboons managed in terms of the approved raiding protocols?
…the SPCA is not 100% satisfied that all the non-lethal methods had been correctly executed and that they had been exhausted before the hunting permits were put into practice.
…the SPCA has been kept completely in the dark and it’s extremely upsetting that, as welfare stakeholders and equal partners to other parties serving on the Baboon Technical Team…you know, we’re calling for open and transparent dialogue with regard to human and wildlife conflict going forward – and a consultative approach in terms of seeking humane solutions. And if there’s a lack of full disclosure on the part of other authorities involved, then we need to seriously question the purpose of our involvement with the Baboon Technical Team going forward.
BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! These four statements get to the heart of the matter.
They show, more vividly and more pointedly than any antics engaged in by the supporters of Baboon Matters Trust or any other civic organisation, just how – through a secrecy contrary to their mandate – these two prestigious conservation organisations’ fell from grace, how they brought about a situation where their continued stewardship of our wildlife and wild spaces can be called into question, and how, through their own stupidity, they have endangered established wildlife management practices and structures, particularly those pertaining to the Cape Peninsula’s baboon troops.
Should the CoGH SPCA decide to withdraw from the BTT, a key baboon management structure will lose much, if not all, of its credibility.
SANParks’ and CapeNature’s Response
Anybody with a modicum of intelligence understands that many of the specious issues preventing SANParks from fulfilling its mandate to the full are driven by the public’s fear of change and the unknown. In the recent past, SANParks has had to deal with
- Parkscape attempting to turn Lower Tokai into a replica of Green Point Park
- BMT’s recklessly emotive campaign surrounding the death by wildfire of a juvenile baboon in 2017
- Parkscape and other organisations hysterically insisting SANParks takes on the roles and functions of the SAPS in maintaining the security of visitors to what remains an open-access (and surprisingly safe) national park bordering the city’s urban edge
So was the decision to exclude the public and the CoGH SPCA from the decision to issue hunting permits based on the likely outrage such a decision would engender?
If it was, it’s simply not good enough. Such reasoning shows only a fear of irrational repercussions on the part of SANParks, CapeNature and other members of the BTT. It shows these organisations to be motivated by nothing more or nothing less than that which motivates their implacable and impossible-to-satisfy detractors. Nor is it a plausible or satisfactory excuse for excluding the CoGH SPCA and the Baboon Liaison Group (BLG) from any meetings pursuing or discussing granting such licences.
If the BTT is to restore the confidence its member organisations and the thinking public place in it, it and each party privy to the decision owe these organisations and the public either a valid reason for its resort to secrecy or a satisfactory apology accompanied by an undertaking enforceable by a third party that it will not resort to such egregious behaviours in the future.
Frankly, no member of the BTT should attach value to the behaviour of habitual detractors – that value is to be found in the quiet, unstinting support of many thousands of Capetonians who will continue to give freely of their time and expertise to ensure that SANParks, CapeNature and other organisations are fully empowered to fulfil their mandates.
CORRECTION
A correction is seldom cause for delight, but this is one I am most happy to make.
On 22 August 2018, a spokesperson for CapeNature advised me that minutes of the Baboon Task Team-Baboon Liaison Group (BTT-BLG) meeting at which the issue of hunting permits by CapeNature to the wine farms was discussed reflect attendance by representatives of both the BLG and the Cape of Good Hope (CoGH) SPCA.
According to the CapeNature spokesperson, neither the CoGH SPCA nor the BLG raised any questions or objections to the issue of hunting licences.
Statements indicating no knowledge of this discussion, made by the CoGH SPCA spokesperson on CapeTalk’s popular Kieno Kammies Show, are therefore both incorrect and, to put it bluntly (given the heated and misdirected emotion generated by the issue of these licences), dangerously misleading.
Attendance at the meeting and, therefore, advance knowledge on the part of an authorised CoGH SPCA representative of the farmers being advised that CapeNature would issue them hunting licences, should have been communicated to the CoGH SPCA spokesperson before statements such as those aired by CapeTalk could be made.
It seems, unless there is an explanation for this apparent lack of communication within the CoGH SPCA, that representative entities within the Western Cape’s leading animal-welfare organisation do not speak to each other.
The result: a dangerously misinformed public.
More, it indicates a failure on the part of the BLG to fulfil its mandate to liaise with the communities it represents – including the public ‘conservation’ groups excoriated in the above blog post.
Finally, it invalidates any assumption that SANParks and CapeNature, as members of the BTT and custodians of our remaining wildlife and wild spaces, failed to communicate (or sought to hide) the legality and likelihood of hunting licences being issued to the Constantia Valley wine farms.
The CapeNature representative raised an extremely pertinent point. Given the “hard-edged urban, rural and wildland divides on the Cape Peninsula” (each of which is subject to different laws and regulations), whose responsibility is it to ensure the public is kept up to date with matters relating to baboon management?
In terms of its remit, that responsibility lies with the BLG. In this instance, it seems the BLG failed both the responsible authorities and the public it is tasked to serve.
Mike Golby writes – at length and, occasionally, with reactive venom – in his personal capacity. His views and the way he frames or articulates them do not in any way reflect or seek to reflect the views of The Cape Aflame Project Team.
As a member of the Cape Aflame Project Team, a group committed to supporting those who protect our biodiversity from an ever-increasing number of urban-based threats (and people), he is as entitled to air his views as anybody else.
He makes no claim to represent anybody but himself – as an ordinary Capetonian with access to information in the public domain. Nor does he send hate mail.
Update: Well, if the attached video is anything to go by, it seems the protest organised by these self-styled ‘conservation’ outfits, claiming to represent upwards of 50 000 peole, didn’t go off as planned or promoted. Given the dismal turnout, the BTT can rest assured these particular ‘acitivists’ pose little or no threat to existing science-based baboon management protocols.
Now, let’s get back to the core issue, i.e. communication within the BTT and with the BLG and other groups…
