Green Group - Simonstown

04/09/2026

IF ONLY BABOONS KNEW HOW MANY RULES THEY HAD TO FOLLOW JUST TO STAY ALIVE…

NOTIFICATION OF THE LETHAL MANAGEMENT OF SK16

Following a decision made by the Cape Peninsula Baboon Management Joint Task Team (JTT), SK16, an adult male baboon from the SK troop was humanely, lethally removed on Friday 04 September 2026. The decision was made in accordance with the baboon management BTTG04 guideline approved in the Cape Peninsula Strategic Baboon Management Plan.

Over the last few months, SK16 has moved around various urban areas, both on his own and with other individuals from his natal troop. On 18 June, SK16 dispersed to Kommetjie with a juvenile baboon. He was caught and returned to his troop’s ranging area on 25 June. During this capture, it was noted that he had a visual impairment and broken canine teeth. On 7 July he dispersed to Fish Hoek. On 14 July, he was once again caught and released above Klein Plaas Dam to provide him the chance to visit other neighbouring troops with the hopes of integration. However, he returned to the Slangkop troop’s ranging area and continued entering urban spaces around their range on his own. Once again at the end of July, he moved off from the troop into the Kommetjie area with two juveniles in tow before being encouraged back to the troop’s predominant ranging area by our team. On 19 August 2026, SK16 returned to Fish Hoek on his own, where no other baboon troops are present, and has remained here since.

In accordance with the BTTG04 guideline for dispersing/displaced male baboons in urban areas, SK16 has been afforded several opportunities to settle with his natal troop or to seek out an unrelated neighbouring troop. Unfortunately, these opportunities have not been met with success. It is possible that his visual impairment and the absence of intact canine teeth prevented him from settling with either his natal troop, or attempting integration with an unrelated troop as he was especially vulnerable to aggression from other males.

The management guidelines recommend that individual baboons that cannot be kept out of the urban area be considered for humane lethal removal as when left unchecked, these baboons face significant risk of welfare harms from shootings, motor vehicle collisions, dog attacks and more. SK16 was at an even greater risk of welfare harms than the average baboon due to his visual impairment. Importantly, SK16’s intent on spending time in the urban space not only impacted him. By forming small splinter groups for forays into urban areas, SK16’s behaviour placed additional baboons at risk.

SK16’s examination revealed that he was completely blind in one eye and was suffering from severe dental disease. Sadly, x-rays revealed the presence of 10 pellets scattered throughout his body.

The Cape Baboon Partnership acknowledges that lethal management is a sensitive and contentious matter. It is never undertaken lightly, nor without careful consideration by the three authorities that comprise the JTT. However, when individual baboons exhibit persistent high-risk behaviours, making these difficult decisions is necessary.

The notification above is shared from Cape Baboon Partnership. Green Group Simonstown played no role in the decision regarding SK16.

SK16 was known as Apex.

Photo: Apex — photographer unknown.

02/09/2026

I was listening to Trevor Noah speaking to Simon Sinek on his podcast 'What Now?' when something stopped me in my tracks.

They were discussing the strange paradox of institutions: how people in positions of enormous authority can know so much and, at the same time, understand so little about what is actually happening.

Sinek spoke about tactical and strategic thinkers. Tactical thinkers know how to get things done. Strategic thinkers look further ahead. They ask not only whether something can be done, but what it will set in motion.

Institutions need both. The problem begins when tactical competence is mistaken for strategic understanding.

This immediately made me think about the decision to remove the Waterfall and Seaforth baboon troops from the wild.

Greg Oelofse of the Joint Task Team has described permanent captivity as the “best choice of two bad choices”. The public is being told that there are only two options: kill the baboons or permanently confine them.

But who decided those were the only two choices?

A funded proposal for a fence has reportedly been put forward. Surely it should be properly and openly assessed before two wild troops are permanently removed.

The language matters too. It is not called captivity, but a “sanctuary”. The baboons are not being imprisoned, but allowed to “live out their lives in peace”. An irreversible decision is wrapped in words that make it sound gentle, compassionate and inevitable. We swallow the decision before we have properly examined what it means.

There is also a contradiction. We are told that a fence could push the baboons towards neighbouring areas and merely shift the problem. Yet authorities acknowledge that removing Waterfall and Seaforth may allow other troops to move into the territory they leave behind.

So displacement is a reason to reject one option, but merely a future “challenge” when it results from the option already chosen.

The authorities may know exactly how to carry out the removal. The facility can be built, permits issued and the baboons captured, transported, sterilised and confined. Every operational box can be ticked.

But that does not mean the larger problem has been solved.

The dangers these baboons face are also being used to justify their captivity. They are shot at, chased by dogs, struck by vehicles and subjected to aversion tools. These harms are real, but they are human harms. To use our failure to control human behaviour as justification for removing the animals is to punish the victims of that failure.

We are told that inside the enclosure the baboons will “live free from people”.

But an animal captured by people, confined behind fences built by people, fed by people, prevented from breeding by people and denied any possibility of returning to the wild is not living free from people.

It is living entirely at their mercy.

The tactical question is how to remove the troops.

The strategic question is what happens afterwards.


Trevor Noah

‘Best of two bad choices’ - Waterfall and Seaforth baboons will be moved to a sanctuary: https://buff.ly/AY0R60V

(Cape Peninsula Baboon Management Joint Task Team member Greg Oelofse admitted that moving two Cape Peninsula troops into a sanctuary is not an ideal solution.)

02/09/2026

Down in Smitswinkel Bay, members of the community started the Baboon Biennale to tell a different story about our relationship with these remarkable animals, and it has grown into quite an event.

Saturday, 19 September 2026
Sunrise to sunset
Smitswinkel Bay

Since 2022, the community has come together to celebrate the fellow primates with whom we share the Cape Peninsula. This year’s theme, “Baboons as Our Heritage,” invites us to think about exactly that: what it means to live alongside baboons, and what their presence means to the natural and cultural heritage of this extraordinary place.

More than 20 artists will be exhibiting, together with young emerging artists. There’ll be an artist walkabout, an informal discussion on Baboons as Our Heritage, a primate walk through the fynbos and intertidal landscape exploring the wild foods we share with baboons, outdoor projections and plenty more.

You can even experience a Baboon Buffet, or opt for a traditional boerewors or vegan-wors roll.

Bring the family, bring your own drinks, and come spend a day celebrating art, nature, community and the wild animals who have shared this Peninsula with us for generations.

At a time when so much of the conversation around baboons feels heavy, this is a beautiful reminder that coexistence can also be about curiosity, creativity, knowledge, joy and pride in the wildlife that still lives among us.

02/09/2026

We’re in Cape Town until tomorrow and need to drive up to Johannesburg as we have to make a few stops along the way. If you have a vehicle in CT that needs transporting/relocating to Joburg, we’d be happy to drive it up for you😉
Brendan 082 719 5463

02/09/2026

It takes 30 seconds

30/08/2026

Observations from someone who attended today’s silent protest in Scarborough:

Today, Scarborough came out for the baboons.

Two of the Simon’s Town troops, the Waterfall Troop and the Seaforth Troop, are due to be permanently removed from the wild and placed in captivity at the newly built Urban Wildlife Centre, just a few kilometres from Scarborough.

What touched me most about today’s protest was the children. They have grown up alongside baboons, and many seemed genuinely shocked by the plans to remove two wild troops from the landscape and place them in captivity.

People gathered quietly along the road beside the centre and, for the most part, simply stood there in silence. Every so often, a voice would break through:

“We love baboons. Keep them free.”

And then, almost extraordinarily, the Groot Olifantsbos troop arrived.

They first rummaged through unsecured garbage bins at the centre, and then climbed into the very enclosures destined for the Simon’s Town baboons.

Tourist buses passed. People hooted in support.

It was wonderful to see something new taking shape today: a young, spontaneous movement, with children, families and a new group of concerned citizens standing up for the right of our wild baboons to remain wild.

Sometimes simply showing up matters.

Images: Dirk Visser

30/08/2026

STOP.

Sometimes a photograph arrives at exactly the right moment.

This beautiful image was taken by my good friend Dave Hurwitz of Simon’s Town Boat Company, a man whose love for False Bay, its whales, its ocean and the extraordinary natural world around Simon’s Town has contributed to the wealth of this place in so many ways.

A Cape Point baboon sitting quietly above a STOP sign. At this particular moment, I cannot imagine a more appropriate photograph.

Perhaps it is time to stop, not simply what we are doing to baboons, but the way we have learned to think about wildlife altogether.

For too long, our response to animals living alongside us has been remarkably old-fashioned. When coexistence becomes difficult, we manage, punish, displace or remove the animal, rather than having the courage and imagination to change the conditions we have created around it. Somehow wildlife is continually expected to adapt to us, while we ask remarkably little adaptation of ourselves.

I think we need to reinvent that relationship.

And that requires courage. We need to be prepared to stand up and say that we want wildlife here. Not only the beautiful or charismatic species. Not only the animals that never inconvenience us. All of it.

We want to wake up to birdsong. We want to hear crickets on summer evenings and toads calling from our waterways. We want reptiles in the mountains, insects in our gardens, whales in our bay and primates moving freely through the landscapes to which they belong. We want to know that the other lives sharing this extraordinary corner of the world still have somewhere to exist, and that our presence has not made their survival harder.

That means widening our idea of what it is to care for a place.

We are understandably fierce about protecting our own homes, our streets and our neighbourhoods. But the mountain is a home too. The wetlands are homes. The rocky outcrops, trees, coastline and remaining corridors of natural habitat are homes. And the creatures living in them are, in the truest sense, our neighbours.

Their homes deserve defending too.

If existing systems are not enough to safeguard those places, then perhaps communities themselves need to become stronger custodians of them. We cannot keep watching the natural world diminish around us and assume that somebody else will be brave enough to speak for it.

Wildlife is not disposable. It is not an obstacle to progress and it is not something we should only value once it becomes rare.

It is part of our wealth.

More precious, ultimately, than any mineral we could take from the earth, because a living landscape cannot simply be purchased again once we have dismantled it.

So perhaps this baboon sitting above a stop sign is offering us something more than a wonderful photograph.

An invitation to stop long enough to decide what kind of world we actually want to live in, and then to have the courage to stand up for it.

Thank you, Dave, for capturing such an extraordinary moment, and thank you to every person who cares for some part of our living world, whether it is plants, insects, reptiles, birds, primates, marine life or the landscape itself. Perhaps that collective care is exactly where a different future begins.

Photograph: Dave Hurwitz, Simon’s Town Boat Company

28/08/2026

👉 https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-08-27-cape-town-s-baboon-crisis-a-last-chance-conservation-opportunity-fund-coexistence-before-captivity/?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_source=facebook =1787895342

International funders could finance targeted Simon’s Town fencing, military fence repairs and Slangkop upgrades to keep Cape Town baboons wild and reduce human-baboon conflict.

26/08/2026

Thank you to Daily Maverick for giving space to this conversation.

The Wealth We Cannot Buy Back asks us to think about what we consider to be wealth, and what we are prepared to lose.

Biodiversity, functioning ecosystems, connected habitat and free-ranging wildlife are part of our natural wealth. These are not sentimental luxuries. They are living capital and resilience, and once spent, they cannot simply be bought back.

While cities elsewhere are beginning to ask how they can make space for wildlife, here in Simon’s Town we are preparing to permanently remove two free-ranging baboon troops from the landscape they have always called home.

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2026-08-26-removing-the-simon-s-town-baboons-the-wealth-we-cannot-buy-back/?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwZnRzaAT8DZ5wZG9mBWZkaWQWUNNnaBPEX531DR4TXMd5C3KK-bIrQGV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkCjY2Mjg1NjgzNzkAAR4_EEJMYapJDnqtzh-QJmSfq-mFrPfCgicOBDyZp0ZVjUaq4HkWy0I--2yKDg_aem_DXpWLELQlOKWhp8w117heA =1787763639

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 t…