Effects of Monitors
Impact of monitors on activity patterns, feeding and home range use.
Summary of project
Baboons are generally recognized as one of the most successful primate species, inhabiting a diverse range of habitats, climates and latitudes throughout the African continent. Adaptations that have facilitated their success across such a wide range of habitats have also made them particularly adept at living close to human settlements and incorporating human food into their diets.
Regular contact between human and baboon populations has often led to conflict and an increase in the mortality of baboons. One solution to this human-wildlife conflict was the introduction of baboon monitors to troops which regularly raided residential areas. The function of these monitors is to chase the baboons out of residential areas and thus away from human food sources.
The presence of both a free-ranging and a managed baboon troop within the southern Cape Peninsula population provides the opportunity to simultaneously assess the impact of monitors on movement, habitat use, activity budgets, raiding and seasonality. Results are therefore intended to guide managerial practices to take environmental factors such as seasonal differences in food availability into account.
