False and Misleading Information Lead to Aggressive Onslaught Towards Baboons and the Humans who Protect Them
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A volunteer based, registered non-profit organisation called Kogelberg Villages Environmental Trustees (KVET) whose mission it is to ensure the humane management of the Pringle Bay baboon troop and to prevent human-baboon conflict has publicly been accused of taming the Pringle Bay baboons.
A study carried out in Pringle Bay by a primatologist has confirmed that the Kogelberg Villages Environmental Trustees KVET BIOS were never witnessed attempting to influence the baboon troop movement in Pringle Bay. According to the report, the baboon’s movement in the village was minimally, if at all, influenced by the presence of either the KVET BIOS or the Overstrand Municipal baboon monitors.
The rhetoric expressed by some residents in Pringle Bay that KVET has negatively influenced the behaviour of the baboon troop in Pringle Bay is therefore false and deliberately misleading.
Analysed data, collected over a period of more than a year also indicates that there has been a reduction in the number of so-called house raids by the baboons who live in Pringle Bay in comparison to when the baboons were managed by a company contracted by the municipality called Human Wildlife Solutions.
Despite the condemnation of over three thousand participants and supporters of a petition, the human-baboon conflict in Pringle Bay is once again being addressed through short-term mitigation and incident preparedness measures, which includes the deployment of deterrents and or possible lethal control methods. Lethal because the shooting of baboons with paint ball markers is indiscriminate with no regard to lactating females and or infants and juveniles.
This approach, as we have learnt over time and past failed attempts, will only tackle the symptoms, but not the underlying causes. As an elephant ecologist once said, treating human-wildlife conflict with deterrents is akin to treating brain tumours only with Aspirin.
Wildfires, the reduction, fragmentation, and degradation of baboon habitat around Pringle Bay in the Western Cape of South Africa has meant that baboons are losing the space and the resources they need to survive. This has increased the visibility of the baboons in the village, which has for some residents developed into a competition between themselves and the baboons, a situation which is affecting the well-being of all. Some residents are reportedly experiencing negative impacts of a perceived quality of life which is directly eroding their tolerance of the conservation of the baboons which has led to the cruel deterrent control methods currently being deployed on the baboons Pringle Bay.
On Saturday 24th August, at 12 noon it was reported that Joey, the alpha male had been shot killed in Pringle Bay.
Joey’s death described as victim of violence, ignorance and intolerance. A large reward has been offered for information. An advocate and watching brief has been appointed to investigate the senseless killing.
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