About 500 chacma baboons are causing trouble for Cape Town residents by breaking into houses and stealing food.
On a sunny afternoon in the coastal village of Simon’s Town in Cape Town, three young chacma baboons cause chaos. They climb onto rooftops, jump between buildings and swing up water troughs. Tourists stop to take photos of monkeys crossing the road. Local people were fed up because this was a daily scene in the village located between the Atlantic Ocean and Table Mountain National Park. About 500 chacma baboons, among the largest monkeys weighing up to 40 kilograms, roam the peninsula south of Cape Town, according to South Africa’s National Biodiversity Institute.
As human development encroaches on mountains and their natural habitat, more and more chacma baboons are entering homes to forage in gardens and scavenging food scraps from trash cans. Some sneaked into the house and vandalized it. Many locals love the animals and give them affectionate names. But many people expressed frustration. “Now they have become too bold. They are bolder than necessary,” said Duncan Low, owner of an ice cream shop.
The monkeys trespassed and even looted the kitchen, snatching food from plates at the restaurant. According to Low, they love sweets and fast food. In 2021, the city once exterminated a male monkey who specialized in scaring residents with more than 40 robberies of food in trash cans, from lawns to porches, sometimes even entering the house when there were people.
Monkey management
Tensions between humans and baboons are at an all-time high, according to ecologist Justin O’Riain, director of the Institute for Communities and Wildlife in Africa at the University of Cape Town. “A baboon at the border between wild and urban areas is the most difficult animal in the world to manage. They can climb and learn from each other. There is no landscape they cannot invade “, O’Riain said.
As human settlement in Cape Town expanded, baboons were pushed higher and higher into the mountains, where foraging conditions were more difficult. The lush gardens that humans built with fruit trees and swimming pools became attractive to them. For many years, the city government has coordinated with the national park management board to conduct a roaming monkey management program through monkey tracking teams.
However, some measures such as shooting paintball guns to scare monkeys or destroying monkeys that cause trouble face opposition from animal rights campaigners. Facing criticism and budget constraints, authorities say the baboon management program will scale back later this year while they research more sustainable solutions.
33 baboons died between July 2023 and June 2024, the highest number in 10 years. Nearly half of the deaths were caused by human factors, including air gun shooting, vehicle collisions and dog attacks. Living with baboons requires human coordination, including managing leftover food, according to conservationist Lynda Silk, head of Cape Peninsula Civil Conservation. For O’Riain, the most viable solution to dealing with slugs is to erect fences in some areas, incorporating electric grids and underground trellises to prevent them from digging underneath. A prototype installed 11 years ago was a huge success with almost no monkeys entering the pilot area.