?It’s hard to sell a house when it’s covered in baboon faeces’: Cape Town divided over plan to remove its

A presença dos babuínos tem afetado os preços das casas na Península do Cabo, pois eles invadem lixeiras e cozinhas e fazem cocô nas propriedades. Fotografia: Nic Bothma/Reuters.

Photograph: Nic Bothma/ReutersThe age of extinctionAnimal welfare‘It’s hard to sell a house when it’s covered in baboon faeces’: Cape Town divided over plan to remove its monkeysTwo troops of chacma baboons are breaking into homes and shops but animal rights activists insist coexistence is the answer.

About this contentGloria DickieSun 27 Sep 2026 07. 00 EDTLast modified on Sun 27 Sep 2026 07. 01 EDTSharePrefer the Guardian on GoogleCape Town’s city council has said it will “imminently” round up two baboon troops coming into repeated conflict with residents.

The animals will be sterilised and permanently moved to a newly constructed sanctuary. The plan has been fiercely criticised by animal rights activists, who say the monkeys should remain roaming freely, and that less destructive options have not been properly considered.

Cape Town’s baboon problem has been brewing since the 2000s, after the city stopped culling troops in the late 1990s after pressure from the public. But in the past two years it has reached boiling point.

Um censo de 2025 revelou que a população havia crescido em um terço desde 2000, passando de 360 babuínos para 493, agora vivendo em 12 tropas gerenciadas.

As a result of the population boom, troops of chacma baboons on the city’s peninsula regularly rip off roof sheeting, sneak into unlocked cars and raid food pantries.

Some monkeys are now staying up late into the night to break into homes in Simon’s Town and nab snacks from convenience stores. Residents can no longer barbecue or host garden parties for fear of the marauding baboons.

View image in fullscreenA community volunteer reminds drivers to slow down to protect baboons in Cape Town, May 2022. Photograph: Xinhua/Shutterstock“It’s depreciated property values because it’s hard to sell a house when it’s covered in baboon faeces and paw prints, and you know they’re coming every day,” said Justin O’Riain, a behavioural ecologist at the University of Cape Town who has long studied the local baboons.

Cape Town’s geography is partially to blame. Much of the problem is confined to the Cape Peninsula, a narrow sliver of land stretching from the city centre to Cape Point.

Aqui, os babuínos estão confinados entre a área íngreme e protegida do Parque Nacional Table Mountain e o desenvolvimento urbano extensivo que se estende até o Oceano Atlântico.

View image in fullscreenA young boy at a protest outside the Urban Wildlife Centre near Simon’s Town on 13 September. Photograph: Esa Alexander/ReutersInitially, the CBP’s 2025 management plan proposed to move four troops to a sanctuary.

That was revised, Mormile said, to give two other troops living in the northern section of the peninsula “the benefit of the doubt to see if they can adjust in that remaining space.

Acreditamos que eles poderiam chegar a um acordo de forma bastante satisfatória.

The baboons have proved an especially divisive – and expensive – issue. Cape Town’s baboon management programme costs about 20m rand for 18 months (£920,000), with full-time rangers watching over most of the troops to try to head off any trouble.

Além de transferir as tropas Waterfall e Seaforth para um santuário, será erguida uma cerca de fronteira norte à prova de babuínos entre áreas urbanas e as montanhas próximas.

View image in fullscreenA baboon tries to open a car door. The animals often enter cars and buildings and take food. Photograph: Gallo Images/ShutterstockAnimal rights activists, who have been staging peaceful protests for months, and some scientists say the city should build a fence to exclude the Waterfall and Seaforth troops rather than remove the animals from their environment.

Read moreHowever, O’Riain said it was likely that the baboons would simply move along to the next area of low-lying land where the fence ends, as there was not enough food for the baboons behind the proposed southern fenced area.

Os opositores argumentam que a remoção dos outros babuínos causará sofrimento psicológico de longo prazo e perturbação social, e que os babuínos desempenham um papel ecológico importante ao dispersar sementes de plantas.

Chacma baboons are not considered endangered. And the welfare of the animals is already in question: baboons are being poisoned, hit by cars, chased by dogs and shot.

View image in fullscreenA chacma baboon looking through a windscreen on the Cape of Good Hope. Photograph: Ryogo i Kubo/imageBroker/Shutterstock“No one should ever shoot a baboon, but if people feel the authorities are not doing anything, they will take action – and that action is never nice,” O’Riain said.