On August 25th, a six month old female yellow baboon (Papio cynocephalus) was collected by the Colobus Trust from Lamu Island on the very northern part of the Kenya coast. This baboon was being kept in poor conditions as a pet. Keeping wild animals as pets is an illegal act in Kenya, and we seem to be responding to more and more of these situations recently, implying a rise in the trade of wild animals especially primates.

The young baboon has been in our rehabilitation centre for three weeks and is ready for release to one of the troops around the Colobus cottage.  To facilitate easy identification as we follow the troop post-release, we have fitted a yellow ear tag to her right ear in addition to using hair dye  to colour her back a dark red.

UPDATE
First, the infant was placed with a 2 year old male baboon - also an ex-pet.  The bond between them grew stronger especially when the resident baboon troop came through the forest to the rehabilitation cage and became aggressive.  We eventually trapped a healthy adult female hoping to start a bond between the infant and the potential adoptive mother.  We removed the 2 year old to help promote the bonding. 

After two weeks together - surely not a long time but they did seem to have some bonding, we released them together into the adult female's home troop.  Although both baboons left the cage together and for a moment it seemed that they would stay together, the infant turned toward the Trust's vehicle and came to it thereby separating herself permanently from the potential mother figure.  Over-conditioned to people, it stayed near the car until several adult male baboons chased her and critically injured her.  The Trust staff found the female in the bushes and took her back and euthanised her.   

We are presenting this event in the hopes that the rehabilitation world will learn from our experiences.  During the rehabilitation process we contacted a baboon rehabilitation centre for information and advice to give our baboon at least a fighting chance.  We received a reply stating they couldn't help us as they didn't know our baboons.  This answer, this lack of sharing of information, was surprising.  The Colobus Trust has been working with baboons and could judge for itself potential solutions if they were provided.  There would have been no guarantee that we would have had a successful rehabilitation of the infant, but at least we would have been given a chance. 
 

Before Tagging	Applying the Tag
Checking the Tag and Swabbing	The Completed Tag
Back in the Rehab Cage after Tagging	The 'Ritchie Tagg' Applicator
Full Size Tag is Too Big	The Trimmed Version Used Here