The arrogance of scientific certainty — Cape Town’s baboons deserve ethics, not imprisonment

When scientific expertise becomes moral authority

In his recent Daily Maverick opinion piece (“Baboons have revealed their hand, and that’s why a sanctuary is the best option”), University of Cape Town professor Justin O’Riain presents permanent captivity as the logical, compassionate and scientifically defensible solution to Cape Town’s contentious baboon management problem.

His argument is confident, occasionally dismissive and seemingly convinced that those who disagree have either misunderstood the science or succumbed to misinformation.

But O’Riain has overlooked something fundamental. Science does not have a monopoly on knowledge, and scientists do not have a monopoly on ethics.

There is a substantial difference between understanding how baboons behave and determining how humans ought to treat them. The former is a scientific question. The latter is fundamentally an ethical one, requiring contributions from philosophy, animal ethics, law and the social sciences alongside ecology and primatology.

O’Riain’s expertise in baboon behaviour is not in dispute. His apparent conviction that this expertise is sufficient to justify the permanent confinement of free-ranging animals most certainly is.

The problem is not necessarily the science he presents, but the moral conclusions he draws from it.

Science tells us what is. Ethics asks what ought to be.

Philosophers have grappled with this distinction for centuries, most famously David Hume, who cautioned against deriving moral prescriptions directly from descriptions of the world. We cannot move seamlessly from what animals do to what humans are morally entitled to do to them.

Yet this is precisely the intellectual leap underpinning O’Riain’s argument.

He observes that baboons repeatedly enter urban areas seeking food and concludes that they have demonstrated a preference for the security and provisioning that a sanctuary would provide.

But a baboon stealing food from a kitchen has not consented to spending the remainder of its life behind an electrified fence. Nor has it demonstrated that freedom, exploration, natural foraging, ecological relationships and the capacity to make choices are dispensable components of its existence. It has demonstrated that food is attractive and accessible.

To translate that behaviour into an endorsement of captivity is to confuse observation with justification.

A primatologist can explain habituation, dietary preferences and social structures. An ecologist can assess habitat suitability and population dynamics. But neither discipline, operating alone, can determine whether the resulting management response is morally defensible.

That requires a further question: even if permanent confinement is technically feasible, do we have the ethical right to impose it?

The missing academics in the room

O’Riain refers to expert consultations involving behavioural ecology, primatology, sanctuary management and conservation.

These are important disciplines. But conspicuously absent from his account is meaningful engagement with animal ethics, moral philosophy or the ethical implications of permanently removing the autonomy of sentient beings.

The proposed intervention is not simply ecological management but rather an irreversible decision about the lives of individual animals.

Animal ethics has developed sophisticated frameworks for examining precisely these questions, including sentience, autonomy, flourishing and the harms associated with confinement. Contemporary animal wellbeing science has likewise moved beyond the narrow proposition that a fed, sheltered and physically healthy animal necessarily enjoys a good life.

The internationally recognised Five Domains Model, developed by David Mellor and colleagues, considers nutrition, environment, physical health, behavioural interactions and mental state. It recognises that opportunities to engage meaningfully with one’s environment and exercise behavioural choice are relevant to quality of life.

Wellbeing is therefore not simply the absence of hunger, injury or disease. For a highly intelligent, socially complex, wide-ranging primate, this distinction is enormous.

An enclosure may eliminate encounters with traffic and aggressive humans. But it also imposes profound restrictions on movement, environmental choice and participation in the surrounding ecosystem.

These losses cannot simply be dismissed because other measurable indicators improve.

The question is not whether captivity provides benefits. The question is whether those benefits justify the permanent deprivation of freedom, particularly when alternatives have not been independently and comprehensively exhausted.

Humans created the problem. Baboons pay the price.

Perhaps the most revealing aspect of O’Riain’s argument is his acknowledgement that Cape Town’s inhabitants have deprived baboons of critical natural resources through urban development. He recognises that roads, houses and commercial expansion have progressively appropriated landscapes upon which wildlife once depended.

Yet having identified human responsibility for the problem, he arrives at a solution that places the ultimate burden on the animals.

Humans occupy the lowlands, transform natural habitats, create irresistible food attractants and fragment ecological corridors. When baboons adapt to these altered conditions, their adaptability becomes the justification for removing them altogether.

It is a remarkable inversion of responsibility.

Instead of asking how human behaviour, urban design and waste management must change to accommodate native wildlife, permanent removal becomes the preferred intervention.

This is the anthropocentrism that continues to dominate much of contemporary conservation. We recognise animals as sentient when discussing their suffering, but largely disregard their independent interests when these conflict with ours.

O’Riain rightly raises the suffering experienced by baboons through vehicle collisions, electrocutions, gunshots and other human-induced injuries. But the existence of danger does not establish captivity as the only ethical solution. Instead, it establishes an obligation to address the danger.

The false choice between suffering and captivity

One of the more troubling aspects of O’Riain’s reasoning is the suggestion that opposition to captivity effectively endorses the continuation of the present situation. 

It does not. There is a difference between defending the status quo and advocating meaningful coexistence. The latter requires systematic food and waste security, appropriately designed fencing, habitat connectivity, competent ranger programmes and consistent enforcement of human responsibilities.

O’Riain argues that fencing the urban edge is expensive, technically difficult and insufficiently supported by residents. These are legitimate considerations, but they are not conclusive ethical arguments.

A revealing contradiction emerged when the City announced the rollout of baboon-proof bins but excluded Simon’s Town because the Waterfall and Seaforth troops were earmarked for relocation.

One important preventive measure was therefore withheld from an area where captivity was being justified. How can the authorities convincingly argue that coexistence measures have been exhausted? Nor should alternative fencing proposals, including those advanced by researcher David Gaynor, be dismissed without transparent comparative assessments of costs and feasibility.

The burden of proof should rest with those advocating the most restrictive and irreversible intervention.

A life sentence dressed as compassion

Recent reporting by Don Pinnock provides further grounds for concern. The proposed facilities allocate about 2.3 hectares to 44 Waterfall baboons and 1.6 hectares to 16 Seaforth baboons.

These are highly social, mobile animals whose lives ordinarily unfold across substantially larger and more varied landscapes. Climbing structures, feeding stations and veterinary facilities cannot replicate the complexity of a freely inhabited landscape.

Moreover, proposed reproductive restrictions raise the possibility of ending the continuity of both troops. This is not merely about caring for 60 individual animals. It is about whether two wild social communities will have any future beyond their present members.

Pinnock also reports that about R10-million covers construction and up to three years of operations, although some baboons may require another two decades of care.

More disturbing is the reported contingency that euthanasia could be considered if funding fails and alternative accommodation proves impossible.

That is hardly an unconditional promise of lifelong protection.

The authorities must demonstrate that the animals’ needs can be met throughout their remaining lives, regardless of future political priorities or financial constraints.

The Constitution has entered the debate

This discussion is especially significant following the Constitutional Court’s judgment of 9 October 2026, which dismissed the challenge brought by the South African Hunters and Game Conservation Association against animal wellbeing provisions in the National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act.

The judgment did not decide the legality of Cape Town’s proposed baboon enclosures. Nevertheless, it leaves intact an important legislative framework requiring animal wellbeing to be considered in wildlife management and conservation.

Crucially, the statutory definition encompasses physical, physiological and mental health, quality of life and an animal’s ability to cope with its environment.

This is considerably more comprehensive than simply preventing injury or providing adequate nutrition. It reinforces the importance of examining the full consequences of management decisions for animals as sentient individuals.

Permanent confinement therefore raises questions about psychological wellbeing, behavioural opportunities, social continuity and severely restricted movement. These are not sentimental objections. They belong at the centre of responsible wildlife governance.

Conservation must become an ethical discipline

O’Riain’s references to misinformation and disinformation are unfortunate. Scientists should welcome informed challenges, particularly where recommendations have profound ethical consequences. Nor is academic criticism invalidated because it comes from outside a particular scientist’s discipline.

A philosopher questioning the ethics of captivity is no more trespassing on scientific territory than a primatologist is trespassing on philosophical territory when making moral claims about confinement.

O’Riain’s longstanding involvement in Cape Town’s baboon management also strengthens the case for independent scrutiny. His documented consultancy involvement does not invalidate his expertise, but relevant institutional relationships should be transparent.

The Cape Peninsula controversy is ultimately about something larger than fences. It concerns the kind of relationship humans believe they are entitled to impose upon other species. For too long, conservation has evaluated animals principally through population numbers, ecological functionality, financial costs and human tolerance.

These considerations are insufficient.

Animals are not simply units within ecological management systems. They are individuals with lives that matter to them, relationships that matter to one another and interests that cannot always be reduced to human convenience.

An ethically defensible approach must integrate ecology with philosophy, animal wellbeing science and law, while recognising the legitimate needs of affected communities.

Before permanent removal proceeds, an independent, multidisciplinary assessment should examine all reasonable coexistence alternatives against transparent criteria, including the full wellbeing of the baboons.

O’Riain is entitled to advocate captivity. He is not entitled to present its ethical justification as settled simply because he believes the behavioural science supports it.

A baboon taking food from a human settlement has not surrendered its claim to a wild life. And a scientist who understands why it takes that food has not thereby earned the moral authority to imprison it.

The baboons have not chosen captivity. We have chosen it for them. And calling that choice compassionate does not make it ethical. DM