The Cape Peninsula’s last 121 chacma baboons, which are facing imminent threat of removal from their habitat, are among South Africa’s most critically endangered primates.
Their removal will precipitate irreversible ecological collapse across the Peninsula because as ecosystem engineers, baboons maintain critical seed dispersal networks that sustain plant diversity across the fynbos biome. Their foraging activities create microhabitats for smaller species, while their presence maintains predator-prey dynamics essential for ecosystem stability.
This is the view of Carol Knox, a concerned citizen who has joined a call for a moratorium to be placed on the removal of these baboons from their natural habitat.
Last month, the Cape Peninsula Baboon Management Joint Task Team (CPBMJTT), a multi-agency task force comprising SANParks, CapeNature and the City of Cape Town, proposed that five splinter troops of the baboons be removed from the Cape Peninsula.
The CPBMJTT said the welfare of the Cape Peninsula baboon troops has severely regressed in the last three years, the population of baboons has increased and allegedly put pressure on resources.
The task team also said the baboons had limited access to low-lying natural land with plants of high nutritional value for foraging. The team added the low-lying areas were too small for plants of high nutritional value for foraging.
How these baboon troops should be removed will be reviewed by a panel of international and local experts. The options include translocation for rewilding, capture and removal to an existing sanctuary or to a newly established sanctuary, humane euthanasia, or a combination of these options.
In an open letter this week, Knox said instead of emergency conservation measures, these animals faced an unconscionable death sentence through proposed removal, translocation and elimination strategies that violated every principle of modern conservation science.
“We are witnessing the deliberate extinction of a unique evolutionary lineage and immediate action is required to prevent an ecological catastrophe that will shame us before future generations.”
Knox said the peninsula baboons were not simply wayward individuals to be managed away.
“They represent a singular evolutionary achievement: Mediterranean-adapted primates whose behavioural plasticity and ecological adaptations have been honed over millennia in one of the world's most biodiverse regions.
“Their successful navigation of human-modified landscapes offers globally significant insights for conservation biology — insights that will be lost forever if elimination strategies proceed.”
She said every individual among these 121 baboons carried irreplaceable genetic information. Their remarkable ability to adapt, their sophisticated social structures and their critical role as seed dispersers made them indispensable components of the Peninsula's ecosystem.
“To eliminate them is to tear irreplaceable pages from the book of evolution itself.”
She said international evidence overwhelmingly demonstrated that translocation strategies failed catastrophically.
“Study after study shows that relocated primates experience devastating mortality rates, fail to establish viable populations, and often die slow, stress-induced deaths far from their ancestral territories.”
Elimination approaches represented an even more unconscionable violation of conservation ethics, she said.
“We are not dealing with an invasive species or ecological pest — these baboons are indigenous inhabitants whose presence predates human settlement by thousands of years. Their 'problem' status stems entirely from human encroachment into their historical range.”
By removing the baboons, authorities would be removing a keystone species whose ecological functions cannot be replicated by any other animal.
“The cascading effects will reverberate through Peninsula ecosystems for decades, potentially triggering localised extinctions and habitat degradation that no amount of human intervention can reverse.”
She said the Peninsula baboons' survival depends on our commitment to pioneering conservation approaches that demonstrate humanity's capacity for environmental stewardship.
“Cutting-edge coexistence technologies, evidence-based management strategies and innovative conflict mitigation tools offer genuine solutions that address legitimate human concerns while preserving this irreplaceable population.”
Last week, the Wildlife Animal Protection Forum of South Africa, a national network of 28 environmental and conservation organisations, wrote a letter to the City of Cape Town, Cape Nature and SANParks to cease and desist from any planning of the removal of baboon troops or individuals.
In their letter, the organisations said the CPBMJTT and their ecologists must formulate ethical management practices that reflect multispecies interactions, peaceful cohabitation and the need for a more responsible model of harmonious multispecies co-existence.
“Key to the co-existence model is acceptance that baboons have lived in the Western Cape for about 200,000 years, have a right to life and should be respected; acceptance, based on research, that baboons prefer low-lying, coastal, fynbos habitat; and the recognition that baboons cannot be practically excluded from the urban areas.”
The organisations said the forced removal of baboons from their natural historical foraging range areas was archaic and a “gut-wrenching, ill-advised decision which they opposed in the strongest possible terms”.
The letter said the decision to “remove” entire baboon troops was euphemistic at best.
“It is wagered that they will not be relocated to a new ‘wild’ area, there are no ‘rehabilitation’ sanctuaries in the Western Cape and no other entities elsewhere that can take them, thus removal simply means that the CPBMJTT will kill them. Let us not mince our words.”
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