Baboon troops have roamed the Hogsback urban area for over a decade, maybe even longer. The village now forms a major part of their home range, leading to a number of human/baboon conflict situations. Troops of the protected Samango Monkey also now inhabit the village.
In order for everyone to humanely live with these primates, please:
- Never feed the wild monkeys or baboons.
- Put your rubbish in rubbish bins.
- Don’t leave food visible to or within reach of baboons and monkeys, near open windows, in cars or outside.
- Do not try to take anything away from a baboon.
- If you feel a baboon is challenging you, walk away with your eyes lowered.
- Cage vegetable gardens and fruit trees.
The Hogsback Baboon Core Group
The Hogsback “Baboon Core Group” are an interest group, comprised of volunteers, who want to identify concrete action plans that can be utilised to help address the Hogsback baboon problem. Our team consists of (in alphabetical order by surname):
- Carol Collins,
- Michelle Griffith,
- Wayne Kent,
- Vincent Shaw,
- Fiona Wallace and
- Felicity Wood.
We are not a closed group, and anyone who wants to input would be welcome to join. To this end, we will seek to gather information from other stakeholder groups, and to document and share these view points. We also aim to try to build bridges between community groupings. We aim to be transparent, and share what we do.
Situational analysis
The core team has really been working hard to come up with a document that summarise all the research hat they have done. They have spend a few months gathering information online and interviewing both residents and research scientists.
“We have tried to present our findings as objectively as possible. We hope that everyone will find this useful as a starting point in finding a workable way forward.”
They have focused their efforts so far on four areas:
- Researching proven ways to reduce human-baboon conflict.
- Documenting actual human-baboon interactions in Hogsback to understand the extent of the problem.
- Ongoing interviews of Hogsback community members to hear opinions, experiences, perceptions and suggestions, encouraging positive engagement across differing views.
- Providing regular communications through various channels to community members to create awareness about preventive actions.
Read the comprehensive summary here: (Download)