I live with my family in a suburb of Cape Town, South Africa’s second-largest city, in a small neighborhood surrounded by conservation land. One afternoon in November 2020, my young children started screaming from across the house about an intruder. “Daddy! Daddy! You need to come now!” Another conflict between Cape Town baboons and humans.

The kids slammed themselves into a bedroom as I rushed toward our kitchen area, where I was confronted by the dark, hulking figure of Kataza, a notorious baboon, who had quietly snuck through an open back door. He was sitting on a counter, his musty odor filling the room, as he rapidly ate our avocados, efficiently placing the pits and skins to one side, while occasionally glancing at me with his deep-set brown eyes. Kataza’s strength and agility — and his large, sharp canines — were well-known; I needed a weapon. I ran to my home office and grabbed a camera tripod with a heavy metal head, then hurried back to the kitchen to find him wolfing down a banana from the fruit bowl.

I knew from previous encounters that Kataza would not be intimidated by me merely shouting at him. To get him out of the house I would need to commit to hitting him. I raised my makeshift club. He pulled back a little, then I hesitated for a second because, truth be told, I didn’t really want to hurt him. I liked Kataza. He instantly sensed my weakness and reached towards me to pluck a banana, which enraged me. Shouting expletives, I chased him out the door, and, with our dog hot on his tail, he vaulted the backyard wall, still clutching the fruit.

The city’s plan calls for installing electrified fences and removing or euthanizing baboons deemed too habituated to humans to reduce conflict between Cape Town baboons and humans.

This was not the first time a baboon (or a troop of baboons) had entered our home, and it would not be the last. We are some of the tens of thousands of Capetonians living in neighborhoods visited by baboons. Conflicts between baboons and people, baboons and dogs, and between people with very different feelings about these large and highly intelligent primates have become normal here. Property has been damaged, and baboons have been injured and killed, as have pets.

For decades, many government officials avoided dealing with our tricky “baboon problem.” But recently, the City of Cape Town has collaborated with national and provincial conservation authorities to produce an action plan that includes installing electrified fences, rolling out baboon-proof trash bins, and removing to a caged sanctuary or euthanizing baboons that have become, in their view, too habituated to humans. Its proponents say the plan will manage baboons decisively and fairly, largely end the conflicts, and pioneer methods for other cities to maintain populations of culturally- and ecologically-valuable large primates.

But, as with most things baboon-related in Cape Town, not everyone agrees with the plan.

Read the full article about baboon conservation in Cape Town by Adam Welz at Yale Environment 360.