Justin O'Riain
Associate Professor, Dept. of Zoology, University of Cape Town
As a behavioural ecologist living in Cape Town my destiny with baboons was sealed from the outset. Hardly a week goes by without a phone call from the press or a member of the public searching for answers to the escalating conflict between the Cape Peninsula baboon population and the ever encroaching humans. I had little idea that science and society could have such a busy interface having previously worked on laboratory housed naked mole-rats (PhD, 1996) and remote Kalahari Meekats (Post-doc, 1998). Both of the latter endeavours represented blue sky research and an attempt to understand the evolution of group living in mammals. This relatively peaceful existence or pursuing lofty research came to an abrupt end when Angela van Doorn (né Layman) approached me with the view to carrying out a PhD on the human baboon conflict within the peninsula baboons. Up to that point I had successfully deflected all scientific and media related baboon queries to Dave Gaynor and Ruth Kansky – the local primate experts. On this occasion the deflection was unsuccessful with Dave suggesting that research was imperative if we were to improve the lot of the local baboons and that he would be prepared to co-supervise Angela if I agreed to be the official University supervisor. It was time to clamber out of my ivory tower, roll up my sleeves and enter the dangerous world of baboon politics where everyone has an opinion and data sets are rare compromised by low sample sizes (n=1 troop,… are you serious?!).
It has proved to be as hard as I first imagined and we have had to exercise tremendous constraint in not giving in to the public and Medias thirst for our opinion based on half baked data sets. Working closely with the managers of Table Mountain National Park and Cape Nature we are fast approaching a rigorous data set that we hope will lead to informed management decisions. In the process of achieving this objective I have managed to assemble a wonderful group of post-graduate students (Angela van Doorn, Esme Beamish, Damiana Ravasi and Tali Hoffman) and collaborators who together represent BRU. Thus armed all we need is money, and lots of it, if we are to succeed in our twin objectives of behavioural ecology and conservation of the only protected population of Chacma baboons in South Africa.
