- Baboons foraging in human areas leads to highly undesirable consequences
A question that is being asked of baboon management on a regular basis is whether using feeding stations (or provisioning) can be used to draw baboons away from human areas, where humans and baboons often conflict with one another. In this post we address the question, based on data we have collected:
Firstly, in response to assertions that it is untenable for local residents and their pets to have baboons living in close proximity to them (and often sharing the same space), we, at BRU would have to agree. The amount of damage and stress that results from baboons using urban space is considerable. Further, baboons also incur ‘costs’ to entering the urban environment, i.e. being hit by cars, shot with pellets, chased by baboon monitors and occasionally, poisoning. In short, the baboons’ presence in urban environments has a wide range of negative consequences, and achieving spatial separation between humans and baboons is crucial.
The primary factor to consider in achieving this end, is food. The suggestion of giving baboons incentive to use natural areas by setting up feeding stations or ‘provisioning’ is logical and has been suggested by a number of interested parties and provisioning wild species is a technique used in other parts of the world, across a range of species and for a number of reasons. One of the experiments that we conducted in Simon’s Town was to test whether provisioning was a viable, sustainable method to keep baboons out of human areas (the experiment is currently ‘in press’, i.e. soon to be published, making the experiment and its findings acceptable by our scientific peers’ standards). Without going into too much detail, here are the take-home messages:
1: A feeding patch did change the troop’s movement patterns, but not significantly, i.e. the troop still used the urban environment regularly.
2: The amount of food the baboons obtained from the urban environment was a reliable predictor of whether the baboons used the urban environment (in other words, the urban food was a strong incentive for baboons to enter urban environments).
3: The troop’s use of the urban space was only significantly reduced once access to urban food was restricted (with wire-mesh fencing).
The last point is the most crucial. That is, the incentive for baboons to enter the urban environment is so great, that free food (i.e. from a feeding station) was only mildly tempting. The appeal of the feeding station increased when urban food was no longer available. What was interesting was that we only used dried maize kernels on the feeding station – comparable to natural food items. The urban food diet the baboons were enjoying included bread, sugar, fruit, vegetables, honey, juice, eggs, cereals and various other typical human foods. To any foraging animal, the equation is simple: an hour’s raiding of urban areas provides the caloric equivalent of a whole day’s worth of foraging in natural areas. It is no surprise that baboons invariably choose the former.
- Corn cannot compete with the large amounts of high-caloric urban food
From here, the argument might go something like this: ‘If baboons are tempted into urban areas by urban food and shutting down those urban food sources is difficult because getting the cooperation of every resident is an arduous task (and it is), why not give the baboons urban food in natural areas, i.e. food that is extremely tempting in natural areas to draw them away from humans?’
Quite simply, if baboons are eating this kind of urban food in excess (and managers would have to continually supplement a feeding patch with high-caloric items to make it effective), their individual growth rates and reproduction would increase and their mortality rates would decrease. In other words, this would increase the population considerably. And as baboon troop’s grow, so they reach a social or ecological threshold and fission occurs (the troop splits into two). And there is the very real chance that the new troop will simply establish their territory alongside an urban area to access desirable food (since the original troop will defend the feeding station from the fission troop). And so the process starts over.
In conclusion, while provisioning might be effective in the short-term, its long-term consequences would be disastrous for successful human-baboon coexistence. The best way to go about ensuring that baboons aren’t in people’s houses and gardens and attacking their animals is to give the baboons no reason to enter these urban environments in the first place (i.e. restrict their access to food). And implementing this strategy will be far easier for an interested resident to achieve than trying to dictate strategy to baboon monitors. As is the case with many instances of human-wildlife conflict, managing wildlife is simple, but it can never be successful without adequate people management.
