JOINT STATEMENT: Final Action Plan for baboons includes a sanctuary, fencing, and more

The Cape Peninsula Baboon Management Joint Task Team (CPBMJTT) consisting of representatives from SANParks, CapeNature, and the City of Cape Town, welcomes the judgment from the Western Cape High Court which allows the three authorities to continue with the implementation of the Action Plan for the management of the Chacma baboon population. Read more below:

The Action Plan is available here: https://baboons.org.za/final-a...

Yesterday, 25 February 2026, the Western Cape High Court dismissed an application brought by the Liberty Fighters Network and Reyno de Beer to interdict the Cape Peninsula Baboon Management Joint Task Team (CPBMJTT) from executing key aspects of the Action Plan which details the practical implementation of the Cape Peninsula Baboon Strategic Management Plan.

The matter was argued in court on Thursday, 19 February 2026.

The judgment started off by stating ‘litigation is not a game’ and that the litigants appear ‘intent on treating our courts as a playground’.

The court found that the application ‘is fatally flawed’; that ‘it has been brought by applicants who have no standing in terms of section 38 of the Constitution’; that the applicants failed the test of convincing the court that it is acting ‘in the public interest’; ‘failed to set out what rights they seek to protect with an interdict’; and that it was an ‘abuse of process in bringing this application in the urgent court in the manner in which it did’.

The court affirmed the three authorities’ constitutional and statutory mandate to work together, and that the authorities have the legal standing and authority to give effect to the Baboon Strategic Management Plan and the Action Plan.

The parties are still to file written submissions on whether costs should be awarded on a punitive scale.

The Action Plan was approved by SANParks, CapeNature, and the City of Cape Town in November 2025. The CPBMJTT remains committed to implementing the plan in the interest of establishing a healthy, well-managed, sustainable, free-ranging baboon population with minimal human interference, overlap and conflict and a reduction in day-to-day aversive measures.

The plan is based on the principles that baboons are a valuable and integral part of the natural ecology and biodiversity of the Cape Peninsula; and that free-ranging baboons living in natural habitats form part of our collective biodiversity and cultural heritage.

The free-ranging baboon population is deserving of conservation and active wildlife management interventions to promote their health, welfare and sustainability.

• There is a limit, however, to the number of free-ranging baboons the Peninsula can sustain in terms of the natural ecology, baboon health and welfare, and management resources.

As such, the baboon population on the Peninsula requires constant management. Also, baboons spending time in urban areas have poor outcomes in terms of health and welfare and this results in habituation, changes in diet, feeding patterns and behavioural change, changes in troop dynamics, increased human and urban-induced injuries and deaths, and greater risk of zoonotic diseases spreading.

• Baboons should not live in or utilise agricultural or urban areas. While overlap may happen on the edges of these areas, the management priority is to minimise the amount of time baboons spend in human-dominated environments and prevent further habituation.

The Action Plan will be regularly reviewed to ensure the actions, assessments, and outcomes are in line with regulatory requirements, strategic direction, emerging trends, and new knowledge. The next formal review will take place in 2030.

For more information contact: cpbmjtt@capetown.gov.za