From a query regarding baboon control that the BBRA recently received, we gleaned this short informative response from Desmond Lakey of the Overstand Municipality.
Desmond J Lakey
Senior Manager: Kleinmond
Administration
Overstrand Municipality
Senior Bestuurder: Kleinmond
Administrasie
Munisipaliteit Overstrand
T: 028 271 8413
C: 0824568026
F: 028 271 4100
email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
The Overstrand Municipality does not have any constitutional authority to undertake the identification, entrapment and translocation of baboons which are frequent food raiders. Nor have any such powers, functions or duties been assigned to the Municipality by an agreement in terms of section 156(4) of the Constitution.This is a functional area of concurrent national and provincial legislative competence, classified under "animal control."
Applied to our situation, it means that Cape Nature has been assigned with the above-mentioned duties. It may in writing authorise such persons as it may deem necessary to hunt such wild animal or such number of such species determined by it. It may thus cause baboons which have been identified as frequent food raiders to be hunted by persons authorised by Cape Nature.
When making a request for the hunting of baboons which are frequent food raiders, the Municipality cannot request that it itself be authorised to hunt them, because the hunting of baboons is not one of the things which, at present, the Municipality is authorised to do in terms of the Constitution. However, if an assignment under section 156(4) of the Constitution gives to the Municipality an authority in relation to the control of baboons in the urban areas in the Municipality’s area of jurisdiction,it will enable the Municipality to make, under section 156(2), an all-encompassing by-law on the subject, including baboon monitoring, the identification of frequent food raiders and the translocation (if feasible) or hunting of frequent food raiders. Having done so, the Municipality may then administer the by-law and lawfully incur expenditure in connection therewith.