City advertises for festive season baboon rangers

Steps are being taken to ensure there will be baboon rangers for the festive season and during the transition to a new baboon management plan next year, says the Cape Peninsula Baboon Management Joint Task Team.

In June, the task team, comprising representatives from SANParks, CapeNature and the City of Cape Town, held meetings with communities in baboon areas about a new plan to manage baboons on the Cape Peninsula.

During the meetings, residents said they were worried about the contract with NCC Environmental Services coming to an end before the new management plan was ready (“Petition urges City to continue urban baboon programme,” Bulletin, July 4).

The City had hired NCC to manage the urban baboon programme and provide rangers to keep baboons out of urban areas until December 31. However, the contract was unexpectedly cut short due to “insufficient budget” for its services beyond November 30 (“Baboon plan transition includes rangers,” Bulletin, August 31).

In a statement on Monday, the task team said the City was advertising a request for quotations this week for baboon rangers during the festive season, as a temporary measure, and, as an “interim solution”, it planned to appoint a contractor on a month-to-month basis over 12 months.

The “preferred long-term solution”, which had yet to be finalised, was a partnership with a non-profit organisation to execute the management plan with grant funding from the task team members and additional “funding and donations” coming from the affected communities and the general public, said the statement.

Executing the management plan would include running awareness campaigns, hosting a website and app, dealing with researchers and providing baboon rangers in support of other measures such as population control, strategic fences and waste management.