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Help Baboon Matters help baboons – Report August 2024

It has been another incredibly busy quarter and I am so grateful to you for your ongoing support of Baboon Matters in our endeavours to help baboons.

At a recent community meeting the City of Cape Town’s Mr. R McGaffin announced that there were only three options for some of the Cape peninsula baboon troops; relocation (not viable he stated), contraception (not viable he stated) or culling entire troops.  Under close questioning from concerned residents, Mr. McGaffin admitted that the CoCT and its partners on the Joint Task Team are considering “euthanizing” entire troops – the CT2 troop being one such troop under consideration.

In response to the concerns, Baboon Matters and its partners sent a Letter of Demand to the individual authorities (CoCT, SANparks, TMNP and Cape Nature) requesting that no relocation or culling of troops should be considered until all mitigation strategies (that they themselves have identified) are implemented and effectively operational.  The response from the JTT has been that they have “not made a final decision” on relocation and culling. Their response is of concern and we have replied in full and requested due warning of such an unwarranted actions.

Our field work has kept us as busy as the legal efforts we are keeping abreast of;  in addition to managing our successful project with the CT2 troop we have also been counting the adult females of various troops.  

My concerns with the numbers of adult females have been on going as I am just not seeing any reasonable increase in the numbers of breeding female baboons from information contained in the official annual censuses going back to 2013. My feeling is that as the focus is on the adult male baboons, numbers of female baboons are not given sufficient attention yet my observations of the numbers of females are worrying.

Sadly, it seems that my concerns are warranted as field counts of the Da Gama troop confirmed that there are now fewer adult females than the first troop count in 1998 where 9 adult females were recorded; the same number were counted again in the 2023 census (which is alarming in itself) but in July 2024 there were only 4 adult female in the troop and 2 in a splinter troop. It must be noted that to have no increase in the number of breeding adults over 26 years should be sending alarm bells through the conservation authorities, yet there is still talk of contraception and culling. 

This week we went to check the Waterfall troop and noted that numbers of the female baboons of that troop are suffering extreme hair loss, 2 of the females have no body hair at all, and the troop does not appear to have general healthy condition.  The counts were as alarming as the evident hair loss, with only 13 adult females counted, 6 less females than the census of 2023.  

The authorities cannot argue an overpopulation of baboons when the numbers reflect the opposite and without breeding females we can expect a further drop in the population.

In addition to the drop in numbers of the females, I am concerned at the exceptionally high death rate of baboons overall and we are collaborating with colleagues and the Cape of Good Hope SPCA in this regard.

Our work is taking on greater urgency and we are all too well aware that a great deal is dependent on the success of our High Court application so we are working extremely hard to prepare for this legal action, knowing that the future for the Cape peninsula baboons may well depend on the outcome of this case.

I appeal to you to please continue supporting our efforts for the baboons, your contributions are hugely appreciated and we rely on this financial assistance.