Cape Peninsula baboon troops have no natural predators and are growing in numbers exponentially. This has led to their raiding suburban homes, causing extreme damages and emotional trauma to residents, especially women, for whom baboons have no fear. They are now rampant from Constantia Nek to Smitswinkel Bay and the Southern Peninsula.

They often urinate and defecate in kitchens and on bedding, creating a serious threat of spreading disease: "The close contact between baboons and humans results in a high potential for the transmission of infectious diseases, from baboons to humans (zoonoses) and from humans to baboons (anthroponoses). Globally, disease transmission between humans and wildlife is occurring at an increasing rate, posing a substantial global threat to public health and biodiversity conservation." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3310462/

Added to this are the detrimental effects of baboons feeding on high-nutrition highly processed human food which creates the same lifestyle diseases that have become severe threats to our healthy living: diabetes, heart disease, tooth decay and allergies.

We, the residents in the above areas feel strongly that the only long-term effective solution for both baboons and humans, would be the removal of all the mountain baboons to a new baboon specific, secure, electric-fenced reserve in place of the current Cape Point Nature Reserve, stretching from Smitswinkel Bay to Scarborough, bordering Plateau Road which would be managed by SAN Parks and monitored by the SPCA, animal nutritionists, international scientists, behavioural ecologists and primatologists as well as offering the opportunity for local and foreign tourists to safely observe the animals in an environment in which they lived for centuries. Those that are too many for this new reserve would be relocated to game parks and natural baboon-specific regions in wilderness areas.

In the upcoming City of Cape Town "Have Your Say" program we desperately need to hear your voice in this reasonable and logical outcome to a situation that has so far, cost the ratepayers in excess of R100 million Rands and has shown no hope of success for either species, baboon and humans.

Please tell us YES you would like to follow this novel, creative and viable plan. If nothing changes and baboons have uncontrolled freedom of the neighbourhoods  their eventual health prognosis would be acutely detrimentally affected, we can expect an increase in home invasions, a spread of disease and a serious devaluation in property values and our lifestyles. 

Thank you for your informed support!