Baboon Management Cape Town

Publicly available monthly reports are produced about the baboon management project. These contain raiding activity and out of town records of the Cape Peninsula baboons, as well as a breakdown of hotline calls for the month, and updated monthly population figures of each troop. In addition to this, monthly, seasonal and daily trends of baboon behaviour are reported on.

To see our latest reports as well as the report archive, click on the Reports Archive button below.

This monthly report covers the period from 1 to 31 August 2020.  During this month of extremely changeable weather, the baboons pushed down to the lower reaches of the mountain to find shelter and food. Unfortunately the continued attractants available to baboons within the urban area, such as  refuse bags on the pavements, fruiting trees, access to food at restaurants and other establishments, often encouraged the baboons to move into the urban areas.

In the southern peninsula, three troops (Waterfall, Da Gama and Slangkop) again proved difficult to manage this month, although improved management efforts on the ground did bear fruit.  The Waterfall Troop spent 98.9%, the Da Gama Troop spent 98.6% of their time out of town.   Unfortunately, the Slangkop Troop’s time out of town continued to remain low at 80%.

In the northern sub population of baboons, the Tokai, Mountain and Zwaanswyk Troops were out of the urban area for 100% of the time but the Constantia Troops (CT1 and CT2) spent 96% and 83.2% out of town.

Until very recently the CT2 troop looked like it had permanently rejoined the CT1 Troop.  However, the arrival of MT14 into the CT2 Troop changed everything.  MT14 showed dispersing male behaviour and took the small CT2 Troop as far as Orange Kloof in Hout Bay and Southern Cross Drive in Constantia during his dispersal forays.  This was a totally new phenomenon in Cape Town baboons.