Article published in The Sunday Times, 7 February 2010
This post has been written to address the incident that occurred at Happy Valley Home in Simon’s Town on the 28th of January. According to a variety of reports, Happy Valley resident, Michael Bates was pushed off a ramp by a fleeing baboon near the men’s dormitory. Three days later, Bates, already an ill man, died. This incident has provoked a number of responses and we feel the need to address the matter, hopefully providing insightful information.
The Waterfall (or Redhill) troop, contains two males (alpha male ‘Bongo’ & sub-adult male, ‘Jimmy’), nine adult females and 12 juveniles. The troop ranges towards the Northern end of Simon’s Town and enters the urban environment to obtain food on a daily basis. This ‘raiding’ behaviour occurs for two primary reasons:
1. Access to this urban food can be easy (particularly with regards to waste areas, and in some cases where food is actually thrown to baboons).
2. The nutritional value and digestibility of human food is higher than the food found in the natural environment.
These two facts create a high incentive for baboons to enter the urban environment. It is this incentive that leads the Waterfall troop to enter Simon’s Town on a daily basis, and ultimately led a baboon into the men’s dormitory on the 28th of January. This baboon was eventually chased out of the dormitory using a bucket of water. The fact that Michael Bates stood between the baboon and its exit was a case of tragic misfortune.
While the incident is worrying, there is no cause to assign malice to raiding baboons. These are animals searching for highly-desired foods. Reducing access to these highly-desired foods will reduce the troop’s incentive to enter the urban environment. In many instances this can be achieved through responsible waste practices and some degree of innovation. During fieldwork on this troop, the baboons were seen to access large amounts of waste (much of which is edible to them), food from large kitchens (or galleys) and hand-outs by vagrants outside the Happy Valley gate. These are the major driving forces that lead the Waterfall (and indeed all raiding troops) into the urban environment.
The real tragedy of this incident is that if access to urban food had been restricted sooner, Michael Bates might still be alive.
