"At the edge of Da Gama Park, where the Cape Town suburb meets the mountain, baboons jumped from the road to garden walls to roofs and back again. Children from South African navy families living in the area's modest houses played in the street. Some were delighted; some wary; most were unfazed by the animals. A few miles away, overlooking a soaring peak and sweeping bay, Nicola de Chaud showed photos of food strewn across her kitchen by a baboon."
"In another incident, a baboon threw one of her dogs across the veranda. In January, a male baboon lunged at her and refused to leave the house for 10 minutes. It has become really, really difficult and very traumatic actually, said De Chaud, 61, a documentary maker who moved from Johannesburg to Simon's Town five years ago. Simon's Town resident Nicola de Chaud has found the baboons intruding on her day-to-day life."
Baboons regularly enter suburban areas, moving across roads, garden walls and roofs and sometimes terrorizing residents and pets. Some residents tolerate the animals, but others have suffered property damage, injured pets and frightening encounters, including one resident who showed photos of food strewn across a kitchen and another whose dog was thrown across a veranda. Pro- and anti-baboon tensions have erupted into protests and clashes, with pepper spray used against both a person and a baboon. Management planners label the situation a "wicked problem." Urban expansion and fragmented parkland have reduced low-lying foraging habitat, and baboon numbers rose from about 360 to over 600.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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