Now the mischievous primates have proved to the world that they are not just disobedient creatures but can be useful as well. They have literally saved a whole river bio-network from an invasive river-killing weed in the process saving Botswana millions of Pula that would have gone into weed eradication efforts.
The chance discovery that the baboons were feeding on the notorious water lettuce (pista startiotes) and karibu weed (salvinia molesta) was made by a team from the Department of Wildlife and National Park's Aquatic Vegetation Control (AVC) unit during a monitoring exercise. That was in 1986. The team had recently introduced weevils - which government had imported from Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) - into the Chobe, Kwando and Linyanti rivers to combat the weeds. The weevils would feed on the weeds and thus help eradicate them. But one September day in 2000, while checking to see if the weevils were worth the money, a DWP team, found - to their astonishment a troop of baboons eating the water lettuce in the Selinda Canal. It was to become the first-ever sighting of the primates feeding on the weeds.
