The protesters, who held up posters and handed out pamphlets to early-morning motorists, staged their demonstration outside the Table Mountain National Park offices in Westlake.

However an organiser, Heather Holthuysen, said their appeal was to Cape Nature Conservation and the City of Cape Town as well.

She said these organisations were legally bound to preserve wildlife, and particularly protected species such as baboons.

They were not doing this effectively, nor were they meeting their obligation to protect human health and safety.

The fact that urban development was encroaching on baboons' traditional ranges created a very difficult situation.

"Baboons are coming off second best: they're being very badly hurt and injured," she said. "We've reached a flashpoint now."

She said the protesters came from civic associations from all over the "deep south" of the peninsula, including Scarborough, Kommetjie and Simon's Town.

Top of their wish list, she said, would probably be to have a human baboon monitor for every troop in the Cape Town area.

"That would go a long way to keeping man and beast apart," she said.

Table Mountain National Park spokesperson Phumeza Mgxashe said the park spent about R1-million a year on the management of baboons.

The mandate of SANParks, the park's parent body, was to manage national parks and incidents within parks.

Baboons on city land fell outside that mandate, and management of such animals became the responsibility of those landowners.

However, the park had, along with Cape Nature, the city, academic researchers and ratepayers' associations, set up a baboon management team.

"This body was formed to find a solution. We want to be part of the solution as well," she said.

There have been growing complaints in recent years about baboon incursions into residential areas on the fringes of the park, which is completely hemmed in by urban development and the sea.

Conservationists say numbers of baboons have been illegally shot, many of them dying painful deaths.

Baboons seeking food have also learned to open the doors of tourists' cars at lookout spots on the scenic routes on the Southern Peninsula.

Sapa

The iafrica.com debate Ebrahim Moolla and Hadlee Simons debate whether the BRT system is really the best solution.

When we fail democracy Rebekah Kendal wonders what it will take before someone stands up to SA's schoolyard bullies…

Quirky & Bizarre Do you need a laugh? Then check out our offbeat stories from around the world...