How chacma baboons became routine exports in a primate trade we don’t talk about

A Pan African Sanctuary Alliance analysis flags chacma baboons as the most frequently recorded primate in legal international trade. The numbers sit inside a wider, continent-spanning market that reaches from trophy exports to the illegal trafficking of great apes.

South Africa is accustomed to measuring wildlife crime in rhino horn and abalone, and to debating trophy hunting through the familiar lens of big cats and elephants. Baboons rarely feature in those conversations.

They are more often framed as “problem animals” along the urban edge, in farming districts and along tourist routes. Yet a report by the alliance suggests chacma baboons deserve a very different kind of attention: in the legal international trade data the report analysed, the chacma baboon (Papio ursinus) is the single most frequently recorded primate taxon, with 2,031 CITES trade incidents – far more than any other primate listed in the report’s top rankings.

The number that changes the conversation

That figure indicates something politically uncomfortable in a country that exports wildlife across multiple markets: the international movement of baboons – listed under Appendix II of CITES requirements – has become administratively normal, processed through permits and paperwork, while public scrutiny remains focused elsewhere. This is how wildlife trade becomes entrenched – not necessarily through a dramatic surge, but through repetition that turns living animals into routine export units.

The Pan African Sanctuary Alliance’s analysis is continental in scope. It examines CITES trade records with a focus on 2015-2023 and identifies 5,286 trade incidents across 78 primate taxa, with 702 involving Appendix I species and 4,603 involving Appendix II species. In that wider picture, chacma baboons – endemic to southern Africa – stand out because they completely dominate the list.

The report’s species breakdown makes the contrast stark. After chacma baboons, the next most frequently recorded taxa are far lower: yellow baboon (Papio cynocephalus) appears with 511 incidents, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) with 418, and olive baboons (Papio anubis) with 393.

A species that shows up that consistently is, at minimum, a reliable indicator of how supply chains, permitting practices and overseas demand are interacting over time.

‘Least Concern’ can still be high consequence

The Pan African Sanctuary Alliance pairs trade rankings with conservation status, and here the chacma baboon illustrates a broader risk. In the report’s table linking frequently traded species to the International Union for Conservation of Nature – as well as the SA National Biodiversity Institute – Red List categories, chacma baboons are listed as “Least Concern”.

That label can act like a cultural sedative. It encourages the idea that trade volume is inherently low stakes and can reduce pressure for rigorous oversight. Yet high-volume trade can still be consequential at local scales, particularly when it coincides with habitat loss, lethal control linked to conflict, and weak verification systems around how animals are sourced and moved.

Exported as hunting trophies

The Pan African Sanctuary Alliance report does not isolate a chacma-baboon-only breakdown of trade purposes and products. Those analyses are presented at broader levels, often distinguishing between monkeys (including baboons) and great apes rather than drilling down to one species.

Even so, the categories the report identifies matter for understanding why baboon exports should be examined closely. The Pan African Sanctuary Alliance finds that the dominant declared purpose in legal primate trade incidents is “hunting trophy”, with more than 2,000 incidents. It also records product types commonly including trophies, specimens, skulls and live animals, and notes that the majority of individuals in international trade are recorded as taken from the wild, with more than 4,000 incidents involving wild-sourced specimens.

According to the 2022 professional hunting statistics prepared by the Professional Hunters Association for the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) and obtained via Promotion of Access to Information Act requests, about 270 chacma baboons were shot as trophies. This is roughly the same figure per annum since 2015 where, according to the CITES Trade Database, thousands of baboon products such as skins, skeletons and whole bodies have been exported as “trophies”. Delve a bit deeper and one can see that chacma baboon exports are almost exclusively from South Africa.

This shows that a trade system dominated by trophies and wild sourcing is not a neutral administrative exercise; it is a system with clear welfare consequences and questions over population dynamics.

No national status assessment — ever

Furthermore, the “Least Concern” status assessment has never relied on a formal national population estimate or detailed census in South Africa. The status listing is derived from qualitative, not quantitative, determinants.

“Least Concern” is based on broad distribution and perceived abundance, not on detailed monitoring or recent population counts. Since they are widely distributed across South Africa, perceived to be relatively abundant at a national scale and highly adaptable to different habitats, including human-modified landscapes, the species does not meet thresholds for threatened categories under International Union for Conservation of Nature criteria at a national level, even though the listing itself admits that the population may be declining.

While the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List assessment acknowledges that “local population extinctions are known from many farming areas” and notes that land-use change is leading to increasingly fragmented populations, it concludes that these pressures do not amount to a major national threat. It also records that body parts of dead baboons are sold in South African markets as traditional medicine, but similarly regards this practice as having a limited conservation impact at a national scale.

But, the assessment does not examine specific pressures such as trophy hunting or the ecological consequences of baboon exports, which may vary significantly by region. In the absence of a national census or updated population surveys, the current classification may therefore mask localised declines and fail to capture the cumulative effects of commercial offtakes on the long-term stability of baboon populations.

If chacma baboons are overhunted, the most immediate effect would be a drop in local abundance alongside a skewed age-and-sex structure, because trophy hunting tends to be selective for large adults (often males). Removing prime adults can destabilise troop hierarchies and breeding dynamics, increasing stress, aggression and turnover as new males move in to compete.

Over time that can reduce reproductive output and resilience, especially in smaller, fragmented populations, and it can amplify genetic isolation where hunting pressure is layered on top of habitat loss and other forms of persecution. Even if chacma baboons are nationally listed as lower risk, sustained high offtake in particular districts can still produce local depletion that’s hard to detect if monitoring is absent, weak or if removals are spread across many properties.

Moreover, a report in 2023 argues that South Africa’s trade in indigenous primates, including chacma baboons, constitutes a systemic breach of CITES Appendix II requirements because exports have been authorised without the scientific safeguards that the convention demands. Appendix II allows trade only where a scientific authority has issued a Non-Detriment Finding (NDF) confirming that exports will not harm the survival of the species.

In the absence of reliable population data, management plans or coordinated national oversight, the report concludes that South Africa cannot demonstrate that primate exports are non-detrimental, rendering the continued issuance of export permits inconsistent with both CITES obligations and domestic biodiversity law.

A quiet trade can still be a serious one

The most unsettling aspect of the chacma baboon trade statistic is not only its size. It is what the number implies about visibility. When a primate is exported often enough to dominate recorded trade incidents, and yet remains largely absent from public debate about wildlife trade, it suggests a gap between what is happening on paper and what is being scrutinised in the open.

That gap is where exploitation thrives, and where a “routine export” story can quietly become a conservation, welfare and governance problem long before anyone decides it should be. DM

Dr Adam Cruise is an investigative environmental journalist, travel writer and academic. He has contributed to a number of international publications, including National Geographic and The Guardian, covering diverse topics from the plight of elephants, rhinos and lions in Africa to coral reef rejuvenation in Indonesia. Cruise is a doctor of philosophy, specialising in animal and environmental ethics, and is the editor of the online Journal of African Elephants.