Cape Town - Animal rights activists want a Constantia property owner to be charged and prosecuted for shooting a juvenile baboon last week that was on his property. The baboon, called Maggie, was later put down by the Cape of Good Hope SPCA due to the severity of her injuries.
Baboon Matters said its monitors had already called for help to remove the troop when they heard the shots fired and later spotted Maggie with blood coming from her face and under her arm.
Maggie is one of many baboons from the Constantia 2 troop that died by either being shot or hit by passing cars after the City of Cape Town withdrew its rangers in April last year, citing an unfavourable forest environment and rangers not being permitted to gain access to many large residential properties.
Cape of Good Hope SPCA wildlife supervisor Jon Friedman said on arrival at the scene, they found the injured female lying prone on a garden pathway with her back legs outstretched and trying to crawl forward using her forearms.
Friedman said they noticed a gash on Maggie’s cheek and on her upper lip. He said she had sustained an open wound beneath her right armpit, which was bleeding.
“Once we had retrieved her and taken her back to our hospital for sedation and X-rays, we counted an air rifle pellet lodged in each hind leg (one pellet having fragmented on impact with her tibia bone).
“We could find no entry wounds for these, so they are assumed to have been old injuries (with the entry wounds having healed over time). We noted a circular-shaped fresh entry wound on the right-hand side of her chest cavity, just beneath the armpit that was bleeding,” Freidman said.
Baboons Matters founder Jennie Trethowan said a life ended because one “callous” resident opted for violence and intolerance instead of letting the monitors in to move the troop from his property.
“While the Cape Peninsula Baboon Management Joint Task Team and City fiddle around with drafts and plans and ending the ranger project, baboons die at the hands of intolerant, frustrated residents,” she said.
Trethowan said the violence against the baboons would worsen unless there was an immediate transition plan and extension to the urban baboon project
SPCA spokesperson Belinda Abraham said a wildlife vet who specialises in forensics would be conducting a post-mortem soon. Asked if a criminal case was opened against the property owner, Abraham said the organisation was still in the process of completing the investigation and awaiting the post-mortem report.