The year is 1553. You are in the foothills of Table Mountain. Forget the happy hum of a modern city; there’s not a building in sight and that’s lion spoor in the sand at your feet. And the sudden crashing of undergrowth nearby could signal the approach of any one of a number of large and dangerous animals: an elephant, hippopotamus or a rhinoceros.
Black rhino used to browse the slopes of Signal Hill & Lion’s Head, overlooking what is now Cape Town.
Nearly all the wildlife you associate with the Kruger Park or Botswana or Kenya once lived in the shadow of Table Mountain. Packs of wild dogs used to chase antelope across the Cape Flats – where the airport is today; hippos waddled through wetlands close to the coast at Muizenberg – where Cape Town learns to surf; and spotted hyenas scavenged left-over lion kills on Camps Bay beach, now the city’s most desirable ocean-front address. Some of Africa’s biggest antelope – eland and red hartebeest – grazed on the slopes of Table Mountain and there were troops of over 100 baboons on the mountain itself, hunted by leopards, their carcases picked over by vultures.
Elephants occasionally wandered onto the Cape Flats, home now to the bulk of Cape Town’s population.
Okay, so not all these animals lived on Table Mountain. Steep, fire-prone and with only unpalatable shrubs to eat (there are no grasses in fynbos) the mountain is a tough place for wildlife to make a living in. But many animals did and still do today – smaller antelope like klipspringer as well as porcupines and the caracal (a lynx-like cat) – and their numbers were far greater than the fleeting glimpse of them nowadays would suggest. Early European explorers recorded terrifying nights while camped on top of Table Mountain, their tents circled by ‘tigers and wolves’ (leopards and hyenas).
Eland were among the most common antelope in the area & still live in the Cape of Good Hope Reserve.
What happened to such a rich mega-fauna? I think you can guess. Such environments rarely survive the onslaught of colonising hungry humans. Of course, the indigenous Khoisan had hunted and trapped animals for food and skins for thousands of years before but with the arrival of Europeans and modern firepower – one hunter turned up in the 1830s with 18 000 bullets – the carnage was almost total.
Bounties were set for ‘problem animals’ – six pounds and five shillings was paid for a lion shot between Table Mountain and Tygerberg, just north of the city – and hippo meat was available for sale at butcheries (half the price of eland or wild boar and a quarter that of beef in case you were wondering). Ever been to the Roudhouse Restaurant overlooking Camps Bay? That used to be a hunting lodge.
Lions once roamed the slopes of Table Mountain & raided the Dutch camps, forcing the settlers to locate their sheep on Robben Island.
There were animals we later generations never got to see. The Cape mountain zebra is still around – just – but its cousin – a half-striped zebra called the Kwagga – was gone by the turn of the 20th century. This animal’s whistling call “kwagga kwagga” used to ring out over what are now the wheat fields and vineyards of the Cape Winelands but were once teeming grasslands. Also vanished forever is the Blue antelope, similar in appearance to the handsome Sable antelope with swept-back horns and a haughty demeanour – shot out of existence by 1800.
A Cape mountain zebra foraging in recently burnt fynbos in the Cape of Good Hope Reserve. Image kind courtesy of Tegan Leighton – instagram @wickedperspective
Some animals made it – but only just. The Bontebok – a prettily patterned antelope – was reduced to a couple of dozen individuals before someone decided to save a few; the Cape mountain zebra population today still numbers only a few thousand and it remains one of the world’s rarest mammals. Leopards, which once terrorised Dutch settlers and their livestock, have been pushed back to the wilder mountains that surround – but are in sight of – Cape Town. Now they are shy and secretive, keeping well away from humans.
Once down to under 30 individual animals, the Bontebok is now the most common big mammal you’ll see in the Cape of Good Hope Reserve.
Such scraps might be seen as small reward for what was once an environment of staggering bio-diversity. South Africa is, after all, the third most bio-diverse country in the world (after Brazil and Indonesia) and even today half of its animals and plants occur in the Western Cape; it must have been a truly astonishing place before the arrival of the gun and plough.
But there are chances to at least have a taste of what it must have been like. A hike on Table Mountain reveals evidence of porcupines (dug-up iris bulbs) and there are always the smaller players to see – lizards, birds and insects – plus an occasional encounter with something interesting like a klipspringer, mongoose or snake. On warm mornings, ravens and buzzards use the mountain updrafts to gain height; on damp days, Cape mountain rain-frogs come bumbling out of the leaf litter; while night time is the preserve of slinky-tailed genets and eagle-owls.
Baboons are one of the few larger mammals you’ll see on the Cape Peninsula but they no longer live on Table Mountain itself.
Moving a few miles from Table Mountain, there are hippos and pelicans at Rondelvlei Nature Reserve on the Cape Flats and antelope, ostriches, baboons and otters in the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve. Go a little further from Cape Town and the mountains are now home to leopards, eagles and antelope; head for the coast and you have seals, penguins, sharks and whales.
And in a modern world where only 5% of animals are wild (the rest are chickens, cows, pigs, sheep and goats), I’d say it was better than nothing.
Related to elephants more than any other animal, the unassuming dassie or rock hyrax is often seen on Table Mountain close to the cable car.
A very goodmorning.Is it normal to find a sheep or goat on top of Table mountain ( close to the cable car building ) very early in the morning, as i have experience ?
Hi William – it is sort of normal – one can see these goats from time to time all over Table Mountain – but they are not normal in the sense that they are an alien species. You saw a Tahr, a Himalayan Mountain Goat, a descendant of a pair that escaped from UCT’s zoo (yes, it once had one) in the 1950s and fled to the mountain whereupon they bred like, well, goats. There have been a couple of big culls to reduce their numbers – the last one about 15 years ago – but a few always survive. They aren’t supposed to be there but they do look kind of natural …
Hi. we just went for a drive to table mountain and around 300m before we arrived at the parking area for the cable car station I spotted a serval, Is it normal to see serval there? I heard about caracal but never about serval.
A serval! Now that is unusual … but they have long been extinct from the Western Cape according to my sources. Could it have been a genet? They are certainly there. Yes, I hear about caracal a lot but never serval. Thank you for the news!
Awesome to see baboons back on table mountain, after nearly 25 years. People walking Celia forest need to keep their dogs under control. The clearing of alien trees could be the reason the Tokia troop has returned.
Yes Bryon, I saw a troop by the Overseer’s Cottage a month ago – first time I have ever seen them on Table Mt – very exciting. But yes, it will lead to conflict with dog-walkers for sure. And yes, the clearing of pines may have forced them onto the mountain – I have seen baboons eating pine cones before – and I have to say that they were finding a lot of food on the side of the road up by the de Villiers dam.
Lovely article – I could actually picture Table Mountain alive with big game in a healthy ecosystem. Thank you for that.
It makes sense!How would a caracal anyways be able to take down an eland, of course there needed to be big game!Its so clever to think of how dassies are the closest relatives of the elephants, meaning that elephants would definitely roam that area.And leopards of course!The cape leopards only now roam the cederberg mountains.Which is on the outskirts of Cape Town!Thank you so much for making this article, it just makes sense!
Just a a question but do you think there would be any possibility or reintroduction of former species that once roamed the steps of Cape Point or Table Mountain?
Hi Jared, good question: in one sense, there has been some re-introduction. Klipspringer were released back onto the mountain about 15 years ago (after a tahr cull, the alien mountain goat) and I used to see them but not for a few years now. And then there are the animals that make their way back naturally. During covid lockdown, a troop of baboons made part of Table Mt (Constantia Nek) part of their range, and baboons haven’t been on Table Mt for decades.
At Cape Point they have reintroduced large animals – eland, hartebeest, bontebok – but the problem there will be an oversupply of herbivores in a limited grazing environment. Maybe time to bring back the lion …?!
Thank’s for the reply! I can only dream of the great lion being back In It’s former reign!
Hi Dominic, do you know of anyone who has done research on the likely trails and paths made by wildlife at the Cape, and particularly in Cape Town? These paths would have been subsequently used by hunter-gathers for millennia and pastoralists, then made into horse and wagon trails in the colonial era, and eventually into the roads we know today.
Hi Andrew – hmm, interesting: the only ones I know are the Old Fisherman’s Path from Hout Bay to Kalk Bay – now part of a hiking trail – and Sir Lowry’s Pass which used to be where eland would come down off the higher ground (the Overberg) and onto the Cape Flats, I assume in winter for all the greenery. See here https://thefynbosguy.com/the-hidden-gems-of-elands-pass/ and there are the famous wagon ruts along the path but that’s as far as my knowledge goes. I can’t think of any other source off-hand, but one name you can discount is Ou Kaapse Weg which goes over Silvermine; there was no old wagon trail there – it was built in the 1960s.
Hi Dominic, thanks so much for your feedback. I am writing a book about walking and cities, and was prompted to ask my question by the following passage in a book about paths and trails in the UK:’Wild animals were the first path makers. When hunting for food and water animals push, shove and break through long grass and thick vegetation, finding the easiest contours, the best places to cross and negotiate difficult terrain and rivers. The earliest humans in Britain were able to follow in their wake…. The lives of these largely nomadic hunters and gatherers were vitally linked to the animals which rustled through undergrowth and grazed the grassland. Our ancestors used animal tracks, which became, over time, people tracks, and along these paths they collected nuts, seeds, herbs and berries and followed these slight paths to water, where fish could be caught and shellfish gathered. From the paths they stalked, trapped and killed their prey, including deer, elk, hares and seals… These earliest paths are the most difficult to tease out, having been lost in the noise of subsequent generations.’ Cornish, J. (2024). The lost paths: A history of how we walk from here to there. Penguin UK. (pp.8-9).