Baboon adaptations to disease and predation: Evolution at the service of human-wildlife interactions (ADAPT)

Chacma baboons in South Africa are stripping bark from pine plantations, raiding crops, and damaging property in urban areas, triggering escalating conflict with humans. This matters because South Africa is the most industrialised biodiversity hotspot in Africa, and its expanding human footprint forces wildlife into closer contact with people. The ADAPT project rejects the usual approach of simply managing baboon behaviour after damage occurs. Instead, it asks whether baboons’ natural avoidance of disease and predators—their “landscape of risk”—can be exploited to steer them away from farms and towns. The researchers hypothesise that baboons’ fine-scale decisions about where and when to move are driven by these ancient threats, not just by food availability. If the framework works, it could replace lethal control and expensive fencing with low-cost, evolutionarily informed strategies—such as placing cues of predator presence or disease risk in key areas. This would reduce crop losses, property damage, and human-wildlife conflict without harming the animals. The approach could also be adapted for other problem species, offering a generalisable tool for managing wildlife in human-dominated landscapes across Africa and beyond.