Removing the Simon’s Town baboons: The wealth we cannot buy back
Our biodiversity is wealth. Our functioning habitat is wealth. The continued presence of wild populations within an increasingly human-dominated landscape is wealth. If that is true, we are choosing to make ourselves poorer.
Biodiversity holds intrinsic value, and preserving functioning habitats contributes to our collective wealth. As environmental advocate Luana Pasanisi points out, wild populations coexisting alongside human-dominated landscapes are an essential component of our wealth. Unfortunately, South Africa seems to be choosing to become poorer by removing two free-ranging troops of chacma baboons from the Cape Peninsula.
The Waterfall and Seaforth troops of baboons, which have been living wild near Simon's Town, are now facing permanent removal. These are not rescued or unreleasable animals; they are functioning social troops that have adapted to their environment. The proposed facility, initially described as a baboon sanctuary, now involves capturing and permanently confining both troops in enclosures on City-owned land at Kogelfontein.
These baboons will have their healthy males vasectomised, no breeding will occur, and they will not be released back into the wild.
This proposal raises significant questions about the evolution of the plan and the evidence supporting permanent confinement. It becomes even more crucial when considering the original objective of achieving a Cape Peninsula baboon population that is healthy and as free-ranging as possible. Regardless of the terminology used - sanctuary, zoo, enclosure, or Urban Wildlife Centre - the question remains: what are we doing to the animals?
The so-called human-wildlife conflict is not a new issue. As we modify our environment, wildlife adapts to survive, but when this adaptation brings them into our constructed environments, we often consider the animal the problem. We have become skilled at managing wildlife while being less willing to manage our own environmental impact. From waste management to habitat fragmentation and our ever-growing demand for space, these factors rarely receive the same level of intervention as the management of wildlife.
In 2024, Green Group Simonstown proposed an alternative approach: to reimagine our relationship with the mountain itself. This plan involved trained rangers protecting the entire living system, monitoring for fires, deterring poaching and illegal hunting, restoring neglected areas, and creating opportunities for research. However, this alternative proposal was never given a chance to be implemented.
Ultimately, the question is not what we call the facility but what we are doing to the animals. The planned removal of these baboon troops challenges us to reconsider what we consider valuable in the world we are entering. The removal of this functioning social troop for permanent captivity questions the true wealth we cannot buy back.
Written by urgent.news from Daily Maverick's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
