The "big three" players in the field of baboon management on the Peninsula - CapeNature, Table Mountain National Park and the city of Cape Town - will meet to hammer out a long-term agreement on funding.

This follows emergency funding by the city of R120 000 a month to pay baboon monitors in a "holding operation" until the end of June 2009.

Current funding for the monitors, who accompany nine of the Peninsula's baboon troops on a daily basis to try to keep the animals out of urban areas and to stop angry residents from harming them, ran out at the end of September.

The 27 monitors have not been on the job for a week and the wily baboons have been quick to take advantage of the situation, raiding places in Tokai,Constantia and Kommetjie, and causing chaos.

But the emergency funding will be spent only on managing four troops: at Da Gama Park, Slangkop near Kommetjie and two at Scarborough.

This increases the number of monitors working with each troop to six or seven, enough to stay with the troops the entire day.

The monitoring programme was criticised for operating only during office hours, as the baboons wait for them to knock off and then start raiding.

The apes start roosting only at sunset, which gets progressively later in summer.

CapeNature's Natasha Wilson, chairperson of the Baboon Management Team, a group consisting of conservation agency and city officials, primate experts and private conservationists, said the system had not been working as well as hoped, even though monitors reported that they had kept baboons out of residential areas 80 percent of the time.

"We decided we would rather do four troops properly, with the right number of monitors working more hours."

Wilson explained that the three-year funding of R3,5-million for baboon monitoring in the Western Cape from the national government's poverty relief programme and channelled through CapeNature, had ended on September 30.

A few days previously, partners in the Peninsula's baboon management agreed to tackle the issue co-operatively and the city agreed to commit funding for a holding operation until June from its unspent 2007-2008 baboon management budget.

"The amount to be made available is R120 000 per month. This covers the management fee, monitors' salaries, administration and transport costs, but could not cover all training, uniforms and equipment."

The team had agreed jointly on which four troops would be monitored. Wilson said the monitors would be back in the field as soon as the city provided a written commitment of funding.

Wilson said a meeting was being planned for the three organisations to agree on their respective funding commitments for this plan.