STORMBERG BABOONS

Public Statement

In May 2024, all the baboons at the Stormberg Conservation Baboon Rehabilitation Centre and Sanctuary(NPC 2020/1148708) were abandoned without warning by the Sanctuary Founder and NPC, leaving the 39 Chacma baboons lives at risk on Klipfontein Farm, Witkop near Burgersdorp in the Eastern Cape.

As no funding from the NPC was made available to take care of the baboons the EMS Foundation has been providing funds to ensure that the sanctuary baboons were given food and other necessities and that the staff employed at Klipfontein Farm who directly cared for the baboons were paid and provided with electricity.  

To safeguard the baboons, this emergency intervention was underwritten with a legal agreement with the owner of the farm and the ex-Director of the NPC who stepped in to care for the baboons. The agreement was for a year and stipulated that the baboons were allowed to remain safely on the farm until a suitable new permanent sanctuary home could be established for them in the Eastern Cape.   The provincial conservation agency issued a permit to the ex-Director.   

There are no baboon rehabilitation sanctuaries for baboons in the Eastern Cape or any wild animal sanctuaries that offer expertise to rehabilitate baboons. The EMS Foundation agreed to pay for the baboons to be relocated to an appropriate baboon sanctuary in Limpopo. 

This offer included payment for the baboons rehabilitation and the costs related to them being returned to the Eastern Cape after such rehabilitation for release onto pre-determined protected properties in the Eastern Cape. Unfortunately, this offer, although supported by the Eastern Cape authorities, was rejected by the Limpopo authorities (LEDET). 

Over the past six weeks a desperate attempt by several non-profit organisations, including the EMS Foundation, to build a baboon rehabilitation sanctuary in the Eastern Cape was made, but, regrettably, today we have been informed that this bold attempt has failed.

The EMS Foundation can do no more. More than a year and a half later, the responsibility for the lives and livelihood of the 39 baboons now clearly reverts to the owner of the farm and with the people who started and ran the sanctuary. 

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Image Credit: Karin Saks

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