SIMON’S TOWN, South Africa — The divisions over baboons run deep in Simon’s Town, where their defenders and haters have clashed on social media and sometimes in real life for years.
Sleepy Simon’s Town in South Africa and its population of around 8,000 are riled up about whether to share their coastal town with two troops of chacma baboons that have invaded from the lower slopes behind Cape Town’s famous Table Mountain, which many of the city’s suburbs push up against. Roughly 60 baboons have moved in on a semi-permanent basis — in town by day, and back to the hills to sleep at night.
The situation in Simon’s Town has become untenable, said Gregg Oelofse, a city environmental official and a member of Cape Town’s baboon unit.
And so the city has settled on a solution after years of fierce debate. The two Simon’s Town troops will be moved to enclosures between around 2 and 3.5 hectares (5 and 8.6 acres) in size, where they will be contained by electric fences.
The males will be neutered, ensuring the troops die out in 20 to 30 years because they can’t breed.
“Baboons and people don’t do well when they’re forced to live together,” Oelofse said. “They do well when they live adjacent to each other.” He said moving the baboons to the “semiwild” enclosures was the best of limited options. The other would be to cull them.
Baboons were trouble for years, but the enclosures deepen the divide
While some Simon’s Town residents seek peaceful baboon-human coexistence on the streets, and welcome them, the reality is that baboons are not good neighbors, and others want them out.
The smart but troublesome animals climb buildings, smash windows, break into homes to steal food and fight with dogs. They rummage through trash cans, flinging trash about.
Simon’s Town deploys “baboon monitors” to manage its primate problems. They sometimes shoot baboons with propellants from paintball guns or use “bear bangers” — non-lethal cartridges that make a gunshot-like noise — to scare them away.
The tactics anger baboon defenders, though the city says it prevents a more lethal response by frustrated residents with pellet guns.
The recent decision has deepened the baboon divide, and baboon-supporting residents and animal activists have protested at the site of the enclosures, some holding homemade effigies of baboons in jail cells. They have promised to peacefully stop the relocation.
“I’m totally against them being caged, vasectomized and confined for the rest of their lives,” said resident Shirley Windell. “I believe that they were here first and yes, you know, we have a place here as well. However, coexistence is required.”
She blamed the city for not enforcing better food waste management, which draws the baboons. Activists worry the baboons will hurt or kill themselves trying to escape from the enclosures.
Urban baboon problems stretch across Cape Town
The battle over baboons goes well beyond Simon’s Town. Many other suburbs on the peninsula south of Cape Town have similar conflicts. The city says there are around a dozen troops and nearly 500 baboons impinging on urban areas. The atmosphere is tense.
In one suburb, residents used sticks and pepper spray to chase off baboons, sparking a clash with animal activists. In another, a woman won a protection order against a baboon activist over false accusations that she killed a baboon. An especially troublesome baboon identified as a ringleader in home raids was removed from one area, causing a public outcry.
Human-wildlife conflict is common in Africa, but usually in a rural setting where farmers fight off animals that destroy their crops or kill their livestock. Cape Town is one of the last major cities in the world with free-ranging baboons, Oelofse said.
A small town grapples with the debate
In Simon’s Town, Oelofse said residents on opposite sides of the debate have vandalized each other’s cars with battery acid. Resident Peter Willis had to organize mediation sessions for the “warring parties” in an attempt to stop the town from fracturing in its battle over baboons after the social media debate got out of control.
The city has banned baboon walking tours run by a wildlife advocacy group and discourages the filming of baboons to defuse public tensions. Feeding baboons in Cape Town is strictly prohibited.
But Oelofse insisted there’s no conservation value in keeping them in Simon’s Town. They live on human junk food, get hit by vehicles, mauled by dogs and die by consuming rat poison, and effectively they’re no longer wild, he said.
“They’ll come sit on your table if you’re eating outdoors and that’s not normal behavior for a baboon,” Oelofse said, adding they take tiles off roofs to break into houses through the ceiling, or smash windows and force open doors.
“These are all learned housebreaking techniques,” he said. “We have a situation where we see no value for baboons, no value for people.”
The well-being of humans and animals collides
Willis has been on the sharp end of baboon break-ins at his home. Once, baboons got in while he and his wife were away and broke jars, left paw prints all over the walls and ceilings, tore down the curtains and “ran amok,” he said.
Another time he came face-to-face with a large male baboon sitting on his kitchen counter. The baboon opened the fridge, Willis threw a tin at it and it ran out, snatching a bag of biscuits on the way.
Willis agrees with the plan for the Simon’s Town troops after 15 years of having to be on guard. Baboons in urban areas simply don’t work, he said. “I think the baboons are going to have a perfectly good end to life.”
But primatologist David Gaynor, who lives in the nearby suburb of Scarborough, has urged the city to employ another solution: a fence that stops baboons entering Simon’s Town but doesn’t completely enclose them. The city plans fencing like that in other suburbs but says it won’t work for Simon’s Town.
Gaynor said Table Mountain is a national park and while it’s unique in that it spills over into parts of a city, it’s a conservation area first and saving baboons and biodiversity should be the priority.
“They’ve been here for 2 million years interacting with the environment,” Gaynor said. “Surely we can’t be so arrogant.”
Imray reported from Cape Town, South Africa.
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