According to Mark Dendy-Young, owner of La Petite Ferme, his vineyards have lost 40% of the annual crop and as much as two to three tonnes a week, enough to make 2,000 bottles of wine.
Male Chacma Baboon
The troop of about fifty marauding baboons have been driven closer to farm lands in search of food because recent bushfires have driven them down from the mountains surrounding the Cape’s wine district, Franschhoek. Dendy-Young told Decanter.com that the animals know just when the fruit is about reach optimal ripeness and scavange the vines just before they are harvested.
Also affected are the Moreson Pinot Noir vineyards which are situated on high slopes.
These primates are agressive, invasive animals and thrive in the Cape Town mountains where they seemingly have few, if any natural predators to control their numbers.
An ongoing problem is that people feed them in spite of many warnings and the baboons associate a human being with food. This results in cars at sight-seeing stops and picnic areas being trashed. Many homes in areas bordering on the mountain reserves have been ransacked and people have been attacked while the baboons attempt to snatch away food.
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Tags:
baboons, Cape, Franschhoek, La Petit Ferme, Mark Dendy-Young, Moreson, Pinot Noir, wine
Very interesting post.People mustn’t be foolish and feed baboons. I recently went on a hike with a few friends.. We went for a swim and when we got back all our possession were all over the place. First we though we were robbed but then we figured out that all our wallets and valuables were still there except for all the food and that baboons had stole our food.
Thanks for commenting.
These animals are cunning too. My boyfriend was in the shower in his locked house in Kommetjie and heard what sounded like rain in the house. Turns out his kitchen was being trashed by babies who could get through the burglar bars. They opened all of the cupboards and emptied the contents of every container onto the floor and shat everywhere as they were chased out when my boyfriend fired at them with his shotgun with soup beans which he had filled the cartridge with! Needless to say it took hours to clean up the mess but somehow the baboons gave his property a miss after that.