Green Group - Simonstown

14/10/2026

13/10/2026

THE WEALTH WE DON’T KNOW WE HAVE

Today I had a conversation with a woman who told me something that has stayed with me.

Her daughter grew up in Simon’s Town, swimming at Water’s Edge, walking through Admiral’s Kloof and exploring these mountains long before many of the houses we see today were built. She now lives on Gozo, a beautiful Mediterranean island off Malta, rich in history, architecture and culture. By most measures, somewhere quite idyllic to live.

But she misses home, and particularly the wildlife. She describes Gozo as a place with very little visible terrestrial wildlife beyond rodents and a few lizards. Even the birds, she says, are subjected to shooting, something she finds deeply upsetting. She misses the crashing waves too, the wildness of our coastline compared with the gentle waters of the Mediterranean.

When she visited her mother last year, she was delighted simply to sit at a window overlooking an overgrown green slope, watching the life unfolding outside. Just watching things. I found that extraordinarily poignant, because what she misses is something many of us barely notice anymore.

We live in one of the most remarkable natural landscapes in the world. Within minutes of our front doors, we can encounter baboons, porcupines, mongooses, genets, tortoises, snakes and an extraordinary variety of birds. Beyond our shores, whales, dolphins, seals and penguins are part of the living richness of this Peninsula.

Yet somehow, the very wildlife that makes this place so extraordinary has increasingly become something we want to remove.

The woman I spoke to worries that our Peninsula is becoming increasingly fragile, that the balance is shifting faster than we realise, and that we may only recognise what we are losing when it is already too late. I think there is something deeply unsettling in that observation.

The photograph of the ranger standing at the end of the road in Admiral’s Kloof, holding an invisible line against the magnificent geological backdrop of these ancient mountains, captures something important. A boundary between an increasingly populated urban landscape and the wild landscape beyond, helping to keep baboons safe while reducing the encounters that so often lead to them being labelled problem or nuisance animals.

There is a kind of wealth that has nothing to do with property values, development or beautiful buildings. It is the privilege of looking out of a window and seeing something wild, of hearing birdsong, a baboon bark, of knowing that beyond the last house the mountain is still alive with animals going about their lives.

This woman’s daughter had to leave the Peninsula to understand just how precious that was.

Perhaps the real question is not how much wildlife we are prepared to tolerate, but how much of the living world we are prepared to lose before we finally understand its value.

12/10/2026

South Africa celebrated a landmark agreement to protect African penguins from food scarcity. Eighteen months later, penguins are losing weight, sardines have died along thousands of kilometres of coastline and commercial fishing has continued before the government even knows how many fish remain.

10/10/2026

A SIGNIFICANT VICTORY FOR WILD ANIMALS IN SOUTH AFRICA

An enormous victory for the EMS Foundation, the NSPCA and all those who have worked tirelessly to defend the legal recognition of wildlife well-being in South Africa.

The South African Hunters and Game Conservation Association challenged the existing provisions protecting the well-being of wild animals. Had they succeeded, these important protections could have been lost or substantially weakened.

The Constitutional Court has unanimously dismissed the challenge, leaving these vital protections intact.

This is significant because animal well-being is not simply about keeping animals alive. Our legislation recognises that their physical and physiological health, mental well-being and overall quality of life matter too.

These considerations must form part of decisions affecting wild animals, including how they are managed, confined, exploited or removed from their natural environments.

The judgment does not introduce new legislation, but it preserves an important legal foundation for holding decision-makers accountable and ensuring that the interests of wild animals are properly considered.

For wildlife across South Africa, including our own Cape Peninsula baboons, this is an important protection at a time when the pressures on wild animals and their natural habitats continue to grow.

Of course, legislation is only as meaningful as its implementation. The real challenge now is ensuring that these protections are respected, applied and enforced.

Heartfelt congratulations and gratitude to the EMS Foundation, NSPCA and their legal teams for defending something that wild animals cannot defend for themselves.

A victory worth celebrating, and a responsibility worth upholding.

Green Group Simonstown

Read more:
https://emsfoundation.org.za/cct-270-24-south-african-hunters-and-game-conservation-association-v-speaker-of-the-national-assembly-and-others/

08/10/2026

Don Pinnock’s latest article is perhaps one of the most moving in this series, because it asks us to see the world through the eyes of the baboons themselves.

For those of us who have spent years alongside these animals, learning their personalities, their relationships, their struggles and their extraordinary resilience, this really does strike a chord.

These are not simply numbers in a management plan. They are individuals, with families, histories and an extraordinary connection to the mountain they call home.

I have always believed that conservation should begin with protecting the natural world and finding ways for us to coexist with the wildlife we are so fortunate to share it with.

Before we make irreversible decisions about their future, surely we owe them the effort of understanding their lives, and asking whether we have truly done everything possible to keep them wild.

Thank you, Don, for reminding us of what is really at stake.

A letter from Jane of the soon-to-be-captured Waterfall baboon troop in Simon’s Town.…

08/10/2026

Don Pinnock’s 4th in the series in Daily Maverick takes us inside the proposed Urban Baboon Centre and raises some deeply uncomfortable questions about the future of the Waterfall and Seaforth troops.

There is no doubt that considerable effort is going into creating this facility, and that deserves acknowledgement. But the fundamental question remains: Have we genuinely exhausted every opportunity to keep these animals wild?

The long term funding, fire risks, reproductive control and the possibility of euthanasia if the facility becomes unsustainable all deserve far greater scrutiny.

Conservation should be about more than keeping animals alive. It should be about protecting their place in the natural world, their social structures, their freedom and the ecosystems to which they belong.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy would be to invest so much in permanent captivity without first investing the same determination, resources and imagination into restoring and securing their wild habitat.

An important contribution to a conversation that is far from over.

Read Don Pinnock’s latest article here:

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-10-07-baboons/?utm_campaign=Post-3072&utm_medium=email&utm_source=first-thing

Sixty baboons are destined for Cape Town’s new enclosures, with a promise of less danger and less stress. Inside the fence, good intentions meet difficult questions: how to evacuate two troops in a wi…

06/10/2026

Part 3 of Don Pinnock’s series.

This one goes to the heart of what we have been asking all along.

Before two wild troops are permanently removed from their landscape, sterilised and confined for the remainder of their lives, have we truly exhausted the possibilities of keeping them wild?

Not doing nothing. Doing better.

Managing waste. Securing the places that continue to attract baboons. Properly resourcing rangers. Investigating fencing and other alternatives seriously. Learning from what has already worked.

Because once we take their freedom away, we cannot give those years back.

Please read and share.

Food, shelter and no future offspring. Opponents say Cape Town’s proposed baboon sanctuary comes with an expiry date for two wild troops. They want alternatives tested before the last generation goes …

06/10/2026

In the second instalment of his baboon series, Don Pinnock examines the science and the disagreement between researchers. Justin O’Riain supports permanent captivity for Waterfall and Seaforth, while David Gaynor argues that fencing and better protection of their wild habitat offer an alternative. A valuable read as decisions about these troops’ future draw closer.

A ‘wicked problem’ resists clear definition and tidy solutions. Its causes are intertwined, people disagree on what a good outcome would look like, and every intervention brings trade-offs. There’s no…

05/10/2026

THE PERMANENT REMOVAL OF THE SIMONS TOWN BABOONS RAISES SERIOUS QUESTIONS OF ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE, PUBLIC PARTICIPATION AND CONSERVATION

WAPFSA member Green Group - Simonstown addressed an open letter to the Mayor of Cape Town, Gordon Hill Lewis on the 29 September 2026.

Ironically, while our Table Mountain has been chosen as the centrepiece of the latest UNESCO WorldHeritage Series coin from France’s Monnaie de Paris, with the design paying tribute to the extraordinary CapeFloral Region, the City is going to soon remove about 60 chacma baboons from that landscape.

Green Group Simonstown NPC (GGST) has been actively engaged in environmental and biodiversity protection, wildlife advocacy, and public participation processes affecting the Cape Peninsula, False Bay, and surrounding ecosystems of Cape Town. The organisation therefore has a direct and substantial interest indecisions that may affect the ecological health, environmental resilience, biodiversity, and future sustainability of the Cape Town region and the well-being of its communities.

GGST is writing to raise serious concerns about the City of Cape Town's decision to permanently remove the Waterfall and Seaforth chacma baboon troops from Simon's Town and place them in permanent captivity at theCity's Urban Wildlife Centre at Kogelfontein.

The City's Action Plan provides for the animals to be captured, assessed and moved into purpose-built enclosures, with healthy males vasectomised. Once removed, they will not return to their former free-ranging lives. This decision deserves scrutiny well beyond the immediate question of baboon management. It raises fundamental questions about environmental governance, public participation, animal welfare, conservation andthe City's responsibilities within one of the world's most important biodiversity landscapes.

UNESCO World Heritage recognised and is today celebrating this area for its Outstanding Universal Value, includingits exceptional biodiversity and ongoing ecological and biological processes. The baboons are part of this livinglandscape.

UNESCO has already been alerted to concerns about the baboon population, and in December 2025 confirmed that it had received the JTT's updated Action Plan and was reviewing it with IUCN.

GGST, which was elected by the Simon's Town community and supporting organisations to represent themon the Cape Peninsula Baboon Advisory Group (BAG) established by the Joint Task Team (City of Cape Town, SANParks and CapeNature), has resigned from this Advisory Group. We made clear our position: “Wedid not join the Advisory Group to lend legitimacy to decisions we fundamentally question. We joined because we believed participation meant that evidence, community experience and viable alternatives would influence the outcome. For approximately seven months, we repeatedly raised the same fundamental concerns. We have not seen those concerns meaningfully reflected in the decisions being implemented. We won’t endorsesomething that, in our view, amounts to a zoo.”

We are not alone. The Wildlife Animal Protection Forum South Africa (WAPFSA), a national network ofwildlife, conservation, environmental and community organisations, has repeatedly opposed the permanent captivity of the Simon’s Town baboons. It argues that the plan disregards their natural free-ranging existenceand that evidence-based coexistence measures should be implemented, evaluated and transparently monitored before permanent captivity is considered. WAPFSA has also put forward alternatives including secure waste systems, targeted spatial exclusion, non-lethal behavioural management, community coexistence measures and habitat interventions.

READ THE FULL LETTER:

https://wapfsa.org/permanent-removal-of-the-simons-town-baboons-raises-serious-questions-of-environmental-governance-public-participation-and/

Image: Facebook