Urgent action needed to ensure survival of Cape Peninsula baboons

I WRITE to you with profound urgency regarding the imminent threat facing the Cape Peninsula’s remaining 121 chacma baboons - dismissively labelled by authorities as mere “splinter groups.” These remarkable animals represent one of South Africa's most critically endangered primate populations, yet instead of emergency conservation measures, they face an unconscionable death sentence through proposed removal, translocation, and elimination strategies that violate every principle of modern conservation science.

- | CAROL KNOX

The time for diplomatic language has passed. We are witnessing the deliberate extinction of a unique evolutionary lineage, and immediate public pressure is required to prevent an ecological catastrophe that will shame us before future generations.

Evolutionary heritage under siege

These Peninsula baboons are 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.

Every individual amongst these 121 baboons carries irreplaceable genetic information. Their remarkable ability to adapt, their sophisticated social structures, and their critical role as seed dispersers make them indispensable components of the Peninsula’s ecosystem. To eliminate them is to tear irreplaceable pages from the book of evolution itself.

Science and current approaches

International evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that translocation strategies fail 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 represent an even more unconscionable violation of conservation ethics. 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.