EcoWorldly

A post of a few months ago considered whether the Cape Town City Council would have to charge residents to manage the Peninsular Baboons - now they have approved funds and plan a workshop while residents have baboons droping into their bathroom.

City Supports Baboon Monitoring and Wants to Develop a Plan

In the first news story since the recent post on the Cape Peninsular baboons, the Cape Town City Council has set aside a quarter of a million dollars to continue the funding of the baboon monitoring programme on the Peninsula.
This was good news for many as there has been uncertainty, as to whether the city council would continue to fund a ten-year-old baboon monitor programme. The programme has minders keeping watch over baboon troops and where possible keeping them away from the urban areas. Sensibly the city has also decided that the quarter of a million dollars is only an interim solution and will also be working with South African National Parks (Sanparks) and Cape Nature Conservation to address the problem. The city will host a baboon expert workshop at the Civic Centre on July 2, with the aim of finding “the most effective strategy for baboon management in the Cape Peninsula” and determining how best to implement it.

• » See also: Mistaken Identity: Hunters Kill Endangered Pygmy Hippo During Pig Hunt!
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In the Suburbs the Baboons Drop In To The Bath

This is surely not a minute too early for Linda Lurie, a resident of Constantia whose children and child minder spent an hour and a half hiding under a table after two baboons had fallen through the roof. The graphic designer, whose children are still terrified, said a baboon troop of about 50 to 60 had been seen in a field alongside her home for a few days. They become bolder and were on the roof “jumping around” when two fell through a perspex section of the roof, into the bath.

Responding to the child minder’s cellular phone call for help, Linda returned and found award-winning filmmaker Trevor de Kock, who is shooting footage for a film about the Peninsula’s baboons, and a volunteer baboon monitor at the scene. They hadn’t been aware of what happened but were able to assist in encouraging the baboons, which had by then found food in and around the house, to leave.

De Kock, who lives in Nova Constantia, said two of the four Tokai troops numbering about 45 and 60 animals respectively, had been “running amok” in different parts of Constantia and that he had never seen such behavior. The minders are doing their best but it’s a difficult task especially in the foul weather at this time of the year, which seems to favour the baboons.

Would The Farmer’s Pumpkin Trap Work?

The baboon can be a dangerous animal when angered and has always made itself unpopular with farmers because of its liking for their produce.

The farmer’s story goes that to catch a baboon who is destroying one’s cops, one finds a big pumpkin into which a hole is cut just large enough to let the baboon get their hand in to grab pips and pumpkin. When the baboon tries to remove his food filled hand it’s too large and they are stuck with a pumpkin attached to their wrist. Because they are so greedy, the story goes, they don’t think to let go of the food. The lack of hits for this technique in Google and Bing searches, probably highlights this as a rural legend!

The more serious and interesting point is that so much care is given to these baboons which in many other places would be hunted as vermin. They are presumably lucky to be living in a tourist area, where they are very visible, rather than on a farm where the farmer would have different priorities.

Image Credit: Baboon photo by Graham Racher on Flickr under a Creative Commons license

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