Learn to live with fellow creatures

With the festive season approaching, there will be tourists on the Cape Peninsular grabbing their cameras to get shots of the “cute” baboons which have become a fixture around Simon’s Town, Fish Hoek and Cape Point.

The constant advance of human settlement up the slopes of the mountains in the area has forced baboons to forage higher up… but they have discovered it’s much easier targeting human dwellings, with abundant fruit trees and even open kitchen windows, for their food.

Tourists are also a target.

Ecologist Justin O’Riain says a baboon on the edge of a wild and an urban area is “the most difficult animal in the world to manage.

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“They are strong, they can climb… and they can learn from each other: there’s no landscape that they can’t conquer.”

These days, they’re becoming hooked on sugar and junk food from rubbish bins, scrounging and raids on the plates of restaurant diners.

Fences seem to work to keep animals out of certain areas – but the Cape authorities don’t have the budget to expand these.

Conflict between humans and baboons causes the deaths of scores of them annually. People will not win this war – we have to make allowances for our fellow creatures.

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