Release Site News

            Tomorrow is my last full day here at CARE baboon sanctuary in South Africa. This morning, watching Yolo, Darcy, Mika, and Yana playing together down by the river, I thought about how much this place has come to feel like a second home to me, and how much I’ve come to know and love these little guys. Yesterday in the nursery, when little Mika curled up under my shirt and went to sleep, I thought about how protective I’ve come to feel of these adorable little baboons. I first realized that feeling about two weeks ago, at the end of the Fourth of July weekend, when we got some news here at CARE. I haven’t written anything about this in my blog yet, since it hadn’t been made public. Now, though, two weeks later and with my time here almost up, I think it’s safe to tell this story.

            As I’ve mentioned a little on previous blog posts, CARE has an overall goal of releasing troops of baboons into the wild. They’ve found good release sites and done it with two troops so far, and also have semi-wild troops here at the sanctuary that hopefully will also be released back into the wild where they really belong. Early on the morning of July fifth Stephen, the director of CARE, got a call from Phil, the employee that’s currently staying at and monitoring the release site for the first troop, which was released back in September. Phil told Stephen that he’d heard the sound of gunshots and baboons screaming, and now could only find three of the troop’s members, of which there were about twenty total. Stephen immediately headed out to the release site to see what was going on. I remember the anxious feeling that loomed over CARE all day as we waited for him to return, hoping he’d bring good news. Stephen finally got back that evening and, long story short, the news wasn’t good. Five of the baboons in the troop had been shot and killed, their bodies just left out to rot. Baboons have had a bad reputation in South Africa for decades, being seen as vermin. Apparently some very sick poachers found their way to the release site and used them for target practice. Needless to say, it was an emotional night at CARE. Stephen and some of the other staff members that knew that first troop were saying the names of the ones that died, remembering them, trying to be happy that they at least had a few months of freedom, and thinking about how crazy it was that the poachers didn’t even take the bodies with them. There was no point to it other than pure cruelty. In the weeks that I’ve been here, I’ve come to really love the baboons here at the sanctuary, and that news made me absolutely sick. Never in my life will I forget the way I felt, laying in my bed at the mountain lodge on the night of July fifth. That night served as a reminder that working with wildlife could be downright heartbreaking. That was one of my first times to really experience that lesson firsthand; I’d heard stories like this before, sure, but that night it was different. I wasn’t watching a documentary or hearing a story from someone. I was right there, at the sanctuary, in the thick of it. These were animals that I was working with, cuddling in the nursery in the morning, carrying down to the river to play, making buckets of food and bottles of warm milk for, animals I was loving. That made it so much more real and powerful than any stories I’d heard or documentaries I’d watched before.

            The night Stephen returned from the release site with the bad news was a night I’ll never forget, and it was another way that this summer in Africa has been life-changing. It was by far the worst day I’ve had here in South Africa, but the last thing I remember thinking before going to sleep that night was this: tomorrow is another day, and there are still nearly 500 baboons living here at CARE that depend on the staff and volunteers to stay clean, fed, and safe.

            The next morning in the nursery I remember cuddling Yolo and the others just a little bit closer, and realized for the first time how protective I’ve come to feel of these little guys. The idea of releasing troops back into the wild has a trade-off: on one side, the wild is where these guys truly belong, and Yolo, Darcy, Mika, Yana, Princess, and the many other baboons here really deserve to have that freedom. At, the same time, though, once they’re released they can’t be protected 24/7 the way they are here, and I’d hate to think about one of the baboons I love here meeting the same fate that those five from the first released troop did.

            This news is about two weeks late here on the blog, but I thought it was important to write this while I’m still here at CARE, listening to the baboons calling outside my window. I’m going to miss this place very much when I have to leave on Tuesday; it’s given me five of the most amazing weeks of my life. This post’s food for thought: “Must we wait until a species is on the brink of extinction before we wake up?”- Rita Miljo, Founder of CARE Baboon Sanctuary.