The Wildlife Animal Protection Forum of South Africa (WAPFSA) is a national network of twenty-eight South African environmental and conservation organizations established in 2017 with a particular emphasis on wild animal protection expertise.
WAPFSA is explicitly designed as a vehicle to engage with governments on the issue of the conservation, wellbeing and protection of wild animals and the natural environment in which they live.Our policy positions are based on robust science, ethical and compassionate conservation practices and harmonious co-existence within nature. WAPFSA’s activities are underpinned by an understanding that the inter-relationship between environmental protection, animal well-being, conservation and the values of dignity, compassion and humaneness are foundational to our constitutional democracy.
WAPFSA also advocates for the concepts of UBUNTU, the intrinsic value of wild animals and an integrative policy approach.
The WAPFSA non-human Primate Working Group has a particular interest in the management of chacma baboons inSouth Africa and has engaged with the Western Cape Provincial Government and with the Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment on several occasions. WAPFSA comments on the Cape Peninsula Baboon Strategic Management Plan are reflected and published on the SANParks website.
Members of WAPFSA are part of the Ministerial Wildlife Well-being Forum, instituted by the Department of Forestry,Fishery and the Environment (DFFE) in May 2023, by special request of former Minister Barbara Creecy, to consult organizations focused on best practices for the protection of wildlife, with the view to implement the provision of animal well-being in conservation practices. The Ministerial Wildlife Well-Being Forum Primate Task Team is chaired by a member of WAPFSA.
Baboons are complex agentic beings, analogous to humans. They have the capacity to suffer, share a common evolutionary and biological history, have their own unique cultures and form their own sovereign communities. Studies clearly show that other animals have rich inner lives, including languages and cultures, and recent work in political philosophy shows that they not only form their own communities, but often actively co-shape communities, habitats, and relations with humans.
When it comes to issues of management strategies, baboons warrant a very different approach from the one currently carried out by the CPBMJTT which: perpetuate settler coloniality; currently reflect a strictly utilitarian mindset – as seen from the application of lethal and pain aversion baboon management interventions and deliberately act to ‘invizibilize’ baboons.
Thirty-Four wildlife welfare organisations have supported the Cease and Desist Letter addressed to the City of Cape Town, SANParks, Cape Nature and Sharkspotters with regard the proposal by the CPBMJTT to remove baboons from the Cape Peninsula.
READ THE CEASE AND DESIST LETTER AND IMPORTANT APPENDIX:
©Image Credit: KVET 2024
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