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URBAN sprawl is growing problem. Drive the fringes of Gauteng’s cities, and you’ll realise just how much development has been happening here, both formal and informal. The vast empty swathes of endless veld between ‘burbs have been shrinking steadily. And one result is a flood of phone calls to a friend of mine.
“Come quick, there’s a monkey up a tree in our school yard!”
“There’s a baboon in a tree!”
“You have to come now, there’s a monkey running around and the people are chasing him!”
Every year, a new crop of male vervet monkeys and young boy baboons reaches a stage of maturity where they head on out, leaving their maternal troop behind to seek another troop where they will live for the rest of their lives. It’s a natural mechanism to prevent incest, and it’s been happening every year since before us humans decided to straighten our back legs and walk upright.
But today, the adolescent boy leaving his troop encounters something new: humans and their homes and businesses, spread out across the ancient routes his kind have taken for millennia. And people don’t like wildlife in their streets and gardens. They’re dangerous, they believe, for a range of reasons. And this puts the primate at serious risk.
Last year, I went to Tembisa with my friend, whose NGO had been called to try and save a vervet, spotted by a crowd in the tall trees in the local school grounds. We spent much of our day talking to the school principal, police, media and local residents, explaining why he was there and that the monkey was terribly frightened by the screaming crowd and, if left alone, he would undoubtedly move on in a day or so (or sooner).
Meanwhile, a colleague, helped by some young Tembisa residents, was hauling a metal trap up a tree two or three stories high, baiting it with food to tempt the youngster. As darkness fell the crowd was still shrieking every time the animal moved. Our hopes were high: attempts to catch monkeys and baboons are often successful.
Killed through criminal ignorance
But next morning, the vervet made a run for it; a local man set his dogs on him and killed him.
In mid-January 2017, in one insane and highly stressed week, calls came in about four vervets and one baboon. Traps are in short supply (I believe there are a total of six or seven in Gauteng), and it can take days to trap one animal, so you can imagine the pressure they were under.
As municipalities and provinces plan for future development - or plan around the de facto development of informal settlements - surely they should be thinking about these issues as well? It’s as much part of the business of government as planning sewerage and traffic routes.
We are expanding into terrain already inhabited by wildlife, and not just primates – five years ago a dead male leopard was found in the suburb of Strubens Valley; an aardwolf was trapped and relocated from another suburb close by.
It seems to me unconscionable that NGOs which don’t receive financial or other support from government are being overstressed in this way. They are, in a sense, providing a service to taxpayers and municipalities for which they’re not being compensated.
Education is the key
The fix is not necessarily expensive: first of all, educate, educate, educate. People who understand why the primates move through their areas are less likely to be afraid of, and/or believe in superstitions about them.
Secondly, please don’t shoot the animals (a common response); they are not vermin but an important part of the ecology – and killing or injuring them is an offence in terms of both national and provincial law. They’re just trying to reach another troop – but imagine if we killed them as a policy. What impact would that have on the sustainability of the vervet and the baboon in this province?
Third, provide resources – fund training for more people in how to safely trap the animals, pay for more traps (a small expense, under R4 000 a trap).
And sit down with various roleplayers who engage with urban wildlife (snake experts, bee removers and the like included) and find out what would make their lives, and the de facto service they perform, easier.
And finally, could the justice system clamp down on harm to wildlife? After the Tembisa incident, we spent a whole day at the local police station, giving evidence to policemen and women who were astonished to hear that killing primates was illegal – why are they so poorly trained and informed?
The culprit was behind bars, and we even identified the dogs used in the killing. That was in April last year. I have just heard that not a thing has happened.
Yes, I know: the local authorities are hardly likely to see or act on this column. So what about you, dear reader: will you pick up the baton and lobby for attention and funding for the wildlife who, through no fault of their own, fall foul of human development?
Practise being an active citizen, as we are all going to have to do: start by emailing your councillor now!
* Mandi Smallhorne is a versatile journalist and editor. Views expressed are her own. Follow her on Twitter.
