Harpactira pulchripes - Golden Blue Foot Baboon - Illegal in South Africa - Photo Credit - Chase Campbell (CEC Arachnoboards)
News Update

Keeping Baboon Spiders in RSA

There’s a lot of speculation and confusion in the South African Tarantula hobby around the legalities of keeping, collecting or transporting our local baboon spiders, and we’ve been trying to figure out the facts. With the help of dedicated local tarantula hobbyists, we have compiled a table detailing all the current legislation we’ve been able to track down in this regard.

Download the PDF document here (Updated: 2020/05/06, 14:48pm)

There is National legislation and Provincial legislation and of course provinces like the Western Cape have specific ordinances over and above their normal biodiversity acts which prevents the keeping of ALL exotic creatures, let a lone tarantulas or baboon spiders. Then there is the Free State where  just about anything goes except nationally listed & protected species.

If you have any information for or against what we have discovered here, please get in touch with with us. We would especially like to hear from government offices or local Natcon offices in this regard. 

If we don’t, we can only be left to assume that in provinces like the Orange Free State, a hobbyist can keep whatever local baboon spiders they choose (except those protected and listed under National Legislation) .

This is a huge contrast to current knowledge being spread as hearsay by hobbyists for the last 10 years at least. We hope you find this info as interesting as we do.

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