Cape Town to relocate baboons to protect troops and residents

The City of Cape Town is moving ahead with a plan to relocate four troops of baboons that have become increasingly dependent on urban areas for food.

The City’s dedicated baboon task management team has developed an action plan aimed at reducing conflict and ensuring the well-being of both the animals and the communities they encounter.

According to the team, the baboons have grown reliant on the urban environment for sustenance—something they describe as unnatural and not sustainable, as reported by EWN.

A key focus of the plan is to prevent further splintering of baboon groups and to maintain a stable, healthy population size.

“They’re suffering all sorts of problems in that space, and the people living in that space are equally having a difficult time, so that’s the rationale for the removal,” said Gregg Oelofse, Head of the City’s baboon task management team.

“It’s looking to reset the situation so that we can move towards a healthy population of baboons that is manageable and is essentially as wild as we can keep them.”

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Oelofse emphasised that the plan is designed to safeguard the animals.

“Very importantly is part of this process is we motivated in the action plan to the mayor that the city move quickly with the development of an urban wildlife bylaw because there are two very important forms of harm that are happening to baboons in our city,” he said.

“One is the physical harm to baboons, but equally as harmful to baboons, we find that a lot of people are actively feeding baboons in many of the suburbs.”

The proposed bylaw would aim to curb both direct harm and indirect consequences of human interaction, with the long-term goal of keeping baboons wild and safe.