Urban wildlife in South Africa - Cape baboons

Abstract

This is the third post on research exploring the interventions to improve the lives of urban wild vertebrate animals in South African cities. We are grateful for the support of a grant from EA Animal Welfare Fund. The aim of this post is to catalogue existing methods for managing the population of Cape chacma baboons living in the Cape peninsula, with a focus on welfare impacts for the baboons. Where appropriate, we indicate which existing methods might be prioritised or modified, to improve baboons’ welfare. Since urban baboon populations are not widespread globally, many of these insights are particular to the local context. However, some insights may be generalised to contexts where urban wildlife populations share certain characteristics with the Cape chacma baboon. Relative to more numerous urban wild animal populations considered “pests” (e.g. rats and pigeons), we think that the importance of interventions to improve welfare of Cape baboons is low. Recent data (in the past \textasciitilde5 years) indicates that annual baboon deaths are relatively low (and have been decreasing). The baboon population seems to be stabilizing around a suggested carrying capacity of \textasciitilde480 baboons. Fewer baboons die from (direct or indirect) human causes than from natural causes (including infanticide). Neglectedness is also relatively low compared to rats and pigeons. The problem seems relatively well-recognised and researched. The City of Cape Town has devoted resources to the existing Urban Baboon Programme (see below), which seems to have been fairly effective at keeping baboons out of urban areas. The issue has received research and media attention. Nevertheless, Cape baboon welfare matters, and efforts to improve their welfare are worthwhile. Improving their welfare seems relatively tractable, e.g. there seems to be reasonably broad “buy in” for humane methods of keeping humans and baboons separate.