Justin O’Riain and Joselyn Mormile declare that there are compelling reasons to defend freedom: “Freedom enables animals to move, forage, explore, reproduce and interact with their environment in ways shaped by their evolutionary history.” I agree. The question is how we protect that freedom while addressing the dangers baboons face in residential areas.
Is this freedom still possible for the Waterfall and Seaforth troops? And what would secure it for them and future troops moving into the mountains behind Simon’s Town?
Let us first look at the current situation, as reported by the Cape Baboon Partnership (CBP).
Here are photographs of members of the Waterfall troop on the morning of 12 October.
They spent the whole day on the mountain, first at Baviaanskloof and then moving up into Klawer Valley, relaxed and behaving as wild baboons. This is the part of their lives we also need to consider when weighing their welfare.
Now let’s look at how we could protect that life: humanely keeping baboons out of residential areas while retaining them as a natural troop and part of the Peninsula ecosystem. There are already successful examples on the Peninsula.
By the measures of success presented by the authorities, the fences at Zwaanswyk have been extremely successful at keeping baboons out of residential areas. Two different types of electric fence achieved this: the fence around Steenberg Golf Estate and the fence along Zwaanswyk Road.
So we have a troop that still spends substantial time outside the urban edge, and baboons that continue to behave naturally on the mountain. We also have a way of reducing their exposure to the residential areas where their welfare is threatened.
Fencing, promoted by Justin, Joselyn and the authorities as 100% effective in these examples, addresses the acknowledged welfare problem of baboons entering residential areas while keeping them wild and fulfilling their role in the ecosystem. To me, that offers a much more positive welfare outcome than spending the rest of their lives in a small camp, in an ever-dwindling group, as older companions die around the youngest individuals.
How, then, can the so-called sanctuary be defended as the best welfare outcome for the Waterfall and Seaforth baboons?
Surely a fence along the existing firebreak should be the outcome the authorities support. Their objections need to be considered against both the life these baboons already have, the prospect of preserving it and the prospective of impact on all future troops on the mountains above Simon’s Town.
The authorities’ objections fall into 10 areas:
Insufficient suitable natural habitat outside the fence.
Displacement into the next unfenced suburb.
Entrenched habituation and urban-ranging behaviour.
Terrain that would prevent effective exclusion.
Further delay prolonging unacceptable harm.
A fence design not demonstrated at scale.
High expenditure for an outcome expected to fail.
Continuing costs and responsibility despite private funding.
Unresolved complications on Navy land.
Environmental authorisation, consultation and opposition.
Here is why I reject those objections, and what I propose to address them.
Insufficient suitable natural habitat outside the fence
Their underlying ecological argument is that the available higher ground cannot provide a sufficiently attractive alternative to productive low-lying areas. They consider this the fundamental limitation.
Yet there is no research on the productivity of the area in question. In my experience, it contains some of the better baboon habitat on the Peninsula: wooded ravines, permanent water and Klawer Valley, an upland catchment with two dams. The Normalised Difference Vegetation Index analysis of vegetation greenness below also challenges the picture of uniformly poor habitat.
The importance the Joint Task Team places on access to habitat below 230m raises a further question about the consistency of its approach. The northern peninsula has substantially less low-lying natural land than the southern peninsula, both in area and as a proportion of the available habitat (figure below). Yet the Action Plan sets a northern population limit of 250 baboons, compared with 175 in the managed southern population, excluding the Cape Point troops.
The Joint Task Team also supports a northern fence intended to secure natural habitat for those 250 baboons. Using habitat areas shown below, this implies about 9.1 baboons per square kilometre of low-lying natural habitat in the north, compared with about 2.5 in the southern peninsula when approximately 100 Cape Point baboons are included. This illustrative comparison places nearly four times as many baboons per unit of low-lying habitat in the north.
If access to land below 230m is so critical, how does the Joint Task Team reconcile these decisions with its argument that insufficient low-lying habitat makes fencing unsuitable for the Waterfall troop? I support the northern fence, but the same ecological reasoning should be applied consistently when assessing a fence for Simon’s Town.
What evidence demonstrates that the available habitat can support the northern population, while the habitat outside the proposed Simon’s Town fence cannot support the troops concerned? This apparent inconsistency requires a clear scientific explanation, based on the food resources and accessible habitat available to each troop, before habitat suitability can reasonably be used to dismiss the fencing alternative in Simon’s Town.
The troops would move to the next unfenced suburb
From the habitat argument, they predict that even an effective, affordable fence would simply redirect Waterfall towards neighbouring settlements.
That is an assertion, but the movements I observe point in another direction. When monitors keep the whole Waterfall troop out of Simon’s Town, the baboons move southeast into the mountains, up into Klawer Valley and even over the other side towards Plateau Road, away from residential areas.
At Zwaanswyk, the troop did not spend more time in other residential areas or change its home range after the fence was installed. Nor does the Da Gama Park troop automatically move to the coast simply because low-lying land is accessible. Historically, baboons permanently occupied high ground around the dams on the main Table Mountain massif, in areas very much like Klawer Valley. The claim that these baboons must move to the next suburb needs to account for those observations.
Entrenched habituation and urban-ranging behaviour
They also argue that these particular troops have learned behaviours that are difficult or impossible to reverse, making continued pursuit of urban resources likely.
The Cape Baboon Partnership’s own data make it difficult to argue that habituation prevents Waterfall from using natural areas: for 99.7% of daylight hours, most of the troop was outside the urban edge. My experience before the first baboon monitor trials at Da Gama Park, Scarborough and Kommetjie (28 years ago) also contradicts that argument.
Baboons from those troops entered residential areas on 30 out of 31 days. Without monitors, they had spent years in these areas and showed the same levels of habituation as we see in Simon’s Town. After all, no one was making an effort to chase them out or limit access to food. Once out of town, they behaved like wild baboons: the same time budgets, the same behaviours and the same foraging.
If habituation is sufficient reason to confine or kill a troop, where does that leave Kommetjie/Slangkop, Constantia 1 and Constantia 2, mentioned in the Joint Task Team’s Action Plan as next up for removal, or the Betty’s Bay, Pringle Bay, Hermanus, Fernkloof and Vogelgat troops? The implications extend far beyond Waterfall and Seaforth.
The terrain would prevent effective exclusion
The Waterfall brief specifically identifies Admiral’s Kloof’s steep terrain, waterfall and stream as difficult to fence, and argues that monitors could not reliably control any remaining gap.
Admiral’s Kloof, called Baviaanskloof on South Africa’s official 1:50,000 map, has steep cliffs. But the proposed fence would follow the existing firebreak along the contour, which is already accessible to maintenance teams. The difficult section is about 60m across rocks and a river at the bottom. This could be dealt with by fencing across the weir.
As a manager of two game reserves who has dealt with game-proof fencing over 15,000 hectares in the Karoo Highlands, I regard this as a routine and minor challenge.
Further delay would prolong unacceptable harm
Injuries and deaths of baboons, damage to property and impacts on residents are presented as reasons to act promptly rather than wait for another intervention to be developed and tested.
I agree that delay has a welfare cost. What is disingenuous is invoking that cost now without accounting for the delays in implementing fencing over the past 20 years under the Baboon Management Team and, subsequently, the Joint Task Team. I have advocated fencing for 26 years, with their tacit agreement.
I have put forward detailed designs and costings since May 2022, shortly after the City announced its intention to withdraw monitors on 30 June 2023. That is more than four years ago. Where was the welfare concern over all that time? Why has the time needed to implement fencing become a decisive objection only now?
My particular fence design has not been demonstrated at scale
They distinguish the established exclusion-fence specification from my cheaper proposal and therefore question both its effectiveness and its quoted cost.
I have repeatedly shared the detailed design and costing, down to the last nail, with the City and the Joint Task Team since May 2022. It is not complicated and differs very little in practice from the Zwaanswyk fence.
The design consists of small-mesh game fencing on poles and droppers, 1.8 metres high and secured below ground with 12mm reinforcing bar. The physical barrier is intended to prevent passage through or underneath, forcing a baboon attempting to cross it to climb towards the 13 live wires above.
The electrical component is designed to make a baboon release its grip before it can climb over. The principle is to provide enough energy to interrupt climbing without causing injury. It is therefore not simply a question of whether a baboon is determined enough to brave the fence.
High expenditure for an outcome they expect to fail
Their financial objection is principally about value for money: substantial capital expenditure would be difficult to justify if conflict merely moved elsewhere. The Waterfall brief estimates more than R40-million.
This objection rests on the same expectation of failure discussed above. It needs to account for Waterfall’s movements when kept out of town, the experience at Zwaanswyk and the fact that Da Gama Park’s troop does not simply move to the coast.
There is also a separate question about what is being costed. I found a funder willing to cover the R6-million I had costed for the 8.3km fence along the mountainside firebreak behind Simon’s Town, removing that capital expenditure risk from the City.
Gregg Oelofse, a coastal and environmental manager with the City of Cape Town, replied that the estimated requirement was R40-million. Apart from using what I consider a highly inflated cost per kilometre, his costing included another 10km of fencing around Signal School, the South African Naval Armament Depot (Sanad) and Pine Haven, a private estate of 10 houses at the top of the Red Hill-Simon’s Town pass. This was a substantially larger project.
It did not feel like a partnership. It felt more like a shakedown of an individual donor, or a barrier set so high that spending a lot of money on a “rehabilitation centre” over the next three years would sound financially prudent.
Nevertheless, I am seeking additional donors to put R40-million towards the City’s requirements, including securing Signal School and the South African Naval Armament Depot, as well as a baboon-proof fence along Kommetjie Road between Ocean View and Capri. That would also help protect Kommetjie/Slangkop from removal and possible killing, alongside the Waterfall and Seaforth troops facing removal to the Kogelfontein camps under the Joint Task Team’s Action Plan.
My aim is to address the capital funding objection, including the additional areas the City says need protection.
Continuing costs and responsibility even with private funding
They point to retained monitors, additional protection for properties above the fence, assessment and consultation costs, and the possibility of still needing a sanctuary if the fence failed.
Conserving baboons on the Peninsula will always have costs. The purpose of the fence is to make that work more effective. My proposal would reduce access into Simon’s Town from 8.3km of open mountainside to two end sections of about 50 metres each, greatly reducing the area monitors must defend. The benefit would extend to future troops using the same landscape, for as long as the fence is maintained.
Continuing management costs must be weighed against those long-term benefits. Before rejecting fencing because captivity might eventually be necessary, the authorities must demonstrate why an attempt to preserve wild living is an unjustifiable investment. The existence of a fallback option does not establish that it should be the first choice.
Sanad and Navy properties create unresolved complications
Artillery disturbance and access to unsafe buildings are cited as difficulties in retaining Waterfall in its natural range and protecting both baboons and people.
The expanded proposal addresses access to unsafe buildings by fencing them off at Signal School and the SA Naval Armament Depot in Klawer Valley, with additional funding being sought from animal welfare organisations. Artillery disturbance is a separate issue to address with the Navy.
The proposal also includes support for upgrading the Signal School area as an important tourist site for Simon’s Town, highlighting the conservation value of naval land. These are opportunities to work with the Navy while addressing the practical problems.
Environmental authorisation, consultation and potential opposition
Environmental authorisation and consultation are necessary, but the time they take is an implementation issue, not evidence that fencing would fail.
Four years was ample time to make progress on these requirements. Let us not forget that the “sanctuary” also faced, and still faces, similar authorisation and consultation requirements, and arguably greater opposition. It was mooted as an option in May 2025, nearly 18 months ago.
An 18-24-month implementation period for the fence apparently “raises urgent ethical questions: Who bears responsibility for the baboon injuries and deaths, and residential property damage while we wait?” Why does the delay in establishing the so-called sanctuary not raise the same questions?
We cannot judge the welfare of the Waterfall troop only by what happens when some baboons enter town. For 99.7% of daylight hours, more than half the troop is outside the urban edge, and I have watched them feeding, socialising and living as wild baboons on the mountain.
That part of their lives has welfare value too. Removing the whole troop would take it away from all of them for the rest of their lives, confining them to a small camp where, if breeding is prevented, their social group will dwindle as older companions die. How is that the better welfare outcome if a fence can reduce the dangers of town while preserving the natural life they already have?
Why would we not choose a solution that offers greater welfare as well as conservation value, keeping baboons wild and part of a functioning ecosystem? This is bigger than Waterfall and Seaforth.
It is about the future of all baboons facing this conflict, and whether we invest in keeping them wild or keep taking their freedom away. DM
Source: Daily Maverick · David Gaynor
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