Addo National Park Elephants

Addo Elephant National Park South Africa

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Many national parks in Africa are known for their elephants Loxodonta africana - Etosha in Namibia, Amboseli in Kenya, Chobe in Botswana, Hwange in Zimbabwe and the Kruger National Park in South Africa. However, at none of these parks can a visitor be sure of seeing 200 or more elephants only a few metres away, trumpeting and growling, drinking, wallowing, showering, doing all the things that elephants do.

But it is at the comparatively low-profile Addo Elephant National Park in South Africa's Eastern Cape that at midday, most days, and particularly when it is hot, a waterhole offers the best elephant viewing in Africa. And all the while there are visitors in cars or buses, watching, so close to the animals that they feel they are totally immersed in the multi-faceted activities of these magnificent creatures.

The Addo elephants are the most benign and tolerant wild hosts of nearly 100 000 visitors each year. They have learned to ignore people and vehicles and they go about their business as if man and his machines did not exist.

But it was not always so. For more than a century the Addo elephants had a fearful reputation of raiding farms, trampling people and livestock and generally wreaking havoc. They continued to roam freely in the Addo area until 1954, when they were fenced in to the Addo Elephant National Park by Graham Armstrong, who perfected an elephant-proof fence of railway line and cable. These animals were the last survivors of the formerly numerous elephant herds of the Eastern Cape.

In previous centuries the dense evergreen thickets of the Sundays River Valley, and the Addo area in particular, created a natural sanctuary for wildlife - including elephants and buffalo. Because it was difficult and dangerous to hunt in the thickets, these animals survived the carnage not only of the ivory hunters from the 1790s onwards, but also of the sport hunters and farmers who came later and eradicated most of the wildlife in more accessible areas. As the land was settled and agricultural infrastructure developed, the elephants retreated to the most impenetrable thickets.

But the slow attrition had reduced their numbers to about 140 by the end of the First World War. Elephants were regarded as a hindrance to development, and war hero Major P.J. Pretorius was commissioned to wipe them out. For more than a year he hunted the Addo elephants under the most trying circumstances, killing at least 120 of them. By his estimate only 16 elephants were left when the campaign was called off. The animals lived a precarious existence for a few more years, with individuals being shot whenever the opportunity presented itself to the local farmers. By 1931 when the national park was proclaimed, only 11 elephants were left. From this remnant grew the population of today which is now well in excess of 270 animals.

The key to the survival of the Addo elephants was the Armstrong fence for, once the animals were confined to the park, their numbers steadily increased. Over the years, starting in 1977, the range of the elephants has been gradually extended. From the 1954 range of about 2 250 hectares it has been increased to more than 10 000 hectares today. The Addo elephants occur at a density far in excess of anything that the Kruger National Park or any other area could support, and as they are confined, their social interactions are therefore more intense. One consequence of this has been a very high rate of bull mortality, usually the senior bulls in musth killing younger rivals; since 1977 about 20 bulls have died because they could not escape the determined pursuit of a musth bull.

However, in all other respects the social behaviour of the Addo elephants seems to be no different to that of elephants from anywhere else in the savanna and woodland biomes of Africa. The elephants do, however, have a few physical features by which they can be distinguished from Kruger elephants - they have far more hair on their bodies and most females are tuskless. The males always have tusks, but these are not as long, thick or heavy as those of Kruger bulls. I have speculated that this is not an adaptation to their life in the spekboom thickets, but rather a consequence of the relentless pressure of the ivory hunters who took the best trophies first and left the runts for last. This may have saved relatively more tuskless females from being shot, and consequently allowed them to become relatively more common in the declining population. Normal two-tusked females occur only in one family, all descended from a matriarch who had a right tusk only. Another family has only one left-tusked female, and yet another has a right-tusked female.

Cape buffalo Syncerus caffer historically extended all the way from Natal to False Bay. As the slow wave of settlement pushed out from the Cape, their numbers declined. By 1850 they survived only in the dense forests of Tsitsikamma, the Addo bush of the Sundays River valley and along the East Cape coast around Kowie, Bathurst and Port Alfred. By the turn of the century, and after the rinderpest epidemic had swept through South Africa, buffalo still survived in fair numbers in this part of the Eastern Cape. Within the first decade of the twentieth century, however, they had been virtually eliminated and only a remnant population survived in the Addo bush. Fortunately these animals were free of both foot-and-mouth and corridor disease and they are the origin of most of South Africa's disease-free buffalo populations today.

The Addo buffalo, perhaps as an adaptation to counter incessant persecution, have become shy and retiring. They move around in small family groups, sometimes no more than a cow with a calf and a youngster from a previous mating. They are largely nocturnal, moving out into open areas to graze at night and then retreating deep into the thickets during the day.

The black rhinoceros of Addo, like the elephants and buffalo, have had an equally remarkable history. The last specimen of the original Cape black rhino of the area was shot in 1853. In 1960 the National Parks Board asked the Natal Parks Board if they would provide some black rhino to restock Addo. The reply was negative as there were none to spare. So the National Parks Board acquired seven animals from Kenya, to be captured and delivered by Nick Carter - a larger-than-life figure who wrote an absorbing book about his exploits. A botched release at Addo resulted in the death of three animals. The four survivors, however, settled down and bred, and numbers increased to more than 30 animals by 1990.

By then, the international rhino conservation community had reached agreement on recognizing four sub-species or ecotypes of black rhino in Africa. The Kenya animals at Addo were recognized as Diceros bicornis michaeli; the south-western ecotype from Namibia as D. b. bicornis which, it was agreed, was indistinguishable from the original Cape rhino of Addo. In 1996, therefore, it was decided to remove all the D. b. michaeli from Addo and replace them with D. b. bicornis. This process is now well under way and by mid-1999 the replacement of these animals will have been completed.

Addo is by far the best black rhinoceros habitat in Africa. The carrying capacity of the Valley Bushveld vegetation is high, and the limitation on the number of rhino is social space, and not ecological. As Addo expands and the black rhino population increases it will develop into a population to rival that of Etosha, which currently holds the largest single black rhino population in Africa.

Over the years other large mammals like red hartebeest and eland have been reintroduced to the park and are doing well. In the Zuurberg Mountains a thriving population of Cape mountain zebra has been established in areas where they were formerly found. The indigenous large mammals which survived the years of settlement - bushpig, bushbuck, kudu and duiker - are still abundant. Recently, Addo has been identified as a field area for the Quagga Breeding Project, run from the South African Museum in Cape Town by Rheinhold Rau and colleagues. Selected plains zebras have been introduced into the park, and currently their numbers stand at about 30, with more to follow. The animals to remain as breeding stock for the quagga project will be chosen on the lack of striping on their legs and rumps, and the background colour. Selected stock from the project may be added to the mix and in time, no doubt, animals that look like the extinct quagga will feature in the holiday pictures of most visitors to the park.

The Addo Elephant National Park has grown over the past decade from 7 700 hectares to more than 50 000 hectares. The largest boost was the inclusion of the former Zuurberg Forest Reserve into the park. However, most of the additional land has been purchased with funds provided by donors - the largest has been the Leslie Hill Succulent Karoo Trust, followed by the International Fund for Animal Welfare, the Rhino and Elephant Foundation and the National Parks Trust of South Africa. The objective is to create a greatly enlarged national park which will stretch from the sand dunes at the Sundays River estuary to the succulent Noorsveld and arid Karoo near the Darlington Dam.

Such an enlarged national park would be one of the richest biological areas in South Africa. Vegetation from seven different biomes would be encompassed by the enlarged park boundaries. These would range from coastal forest and grasslands, through Valley Bushveld to evergreen montane forest, fynbos, montane grasslands, Karoo and the Noorsveld itself. Addo already has more plant species than the entire Kruger National Park, which is forty times larger. With the variety of vegetation would come a great diversity of birds, reptiles, insects and amphibians.

While this enlarged national park will be a treasure house for South Africa's biodiversity conservation effort, it will have other values perhaps even more pertinent to the economically depressed eastern Cape region. Biodiversity, spectacular scenery and wildlife are the bedrock of tourism, and ecotourism in particular. Tourism brings jobs and economic opportunity. When this is linked to the broader vision of development in the Algoa region emanating from the Coega Project and the Fish River Spatial Development Initiative, then the role of the South African National Parks as a driver of development becomes increasingly important. An enlarged Addo Elephant National Park is seen as a logical extension of the Coega philo-sophy - to create economic opportunities and jobs. The attraction of a tourist waterfront experience in Port Elizabeth, with a 'Big Five' wildlife destination a mere 30 minutes away, is the target, and one which is now realistically within reach.

Research in progress
Addo's elephants provide valuable opportunities for detailed research on an elephant population. Given the relatively small size of the population, which is confined to just 10 300 hec-tares, it is both possible and practical to get to know each elephant in the park individually.

Individual identification provides a reliable method to determine the exact number of elephants in the park as well as enabling detailed study of the structure of the population. In addition, individual recognition of animals within a population provides an invaluable foundation for behavioural and other studies.

Elephants can be distinguished from one another by a number of different characteristics. Notches and holes around the edge of their ears, caused by catching them in vegetation or by fighting, often result in a distinctive pattern enabling easy identification. The size, shape and configuration of the tusks vary between individuals and can also be used to aid recognition, as can any other distinctive features such as kinks in the tail, lumps on the trunk, and so on. However, not all elephants have obvious distinctive features - many have smooth ears and, in Addo, the majority of cows are tuskless. Such animals can be identified by the pattern of wrinkles on the elephant's face, and the vein pattern in the ear. These features, like a human fingerprint, are unique to each animal, and do not alter through the animal's life.

Not only are all 272 elephants currently living in Addo individually known (and named!) but, in addition, the population's history since the creation of the park in 1931 has been painstakingly re-traced, and maternal family trees of the whole population (dating from 1931 to the present day) have been reconstructed. Thousands of photographs of the Addo elephants, taken throughout the history of the park, have been studied and analysed in conjunction with all available written records.

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The result is a unique and fascinating data set: 67 years of detailed information of the entire population, including the relationships between all its members. Behavioural observations alone cannot identify the relationships between adults within an elephant population, but the Addo elephant family trees provide this information. Therefore we know that Buttercup, the park's oldest elephant (born in 1938), is the grandmother of Blossom, another adult cow within the 'B' family, and thus Bini, Blossom's new calf and the park's youngest elephant, gives Buttercup yet another great-granddaughter!

Analysis of all the demographic data generated by the reconstruction of the population's history will provide an insight into the growth and recovery of the population, while the intimate knowledge of the population provides an invaluable foundation for further research, enabling a number of important issues to be addressed. A paternity study to identify who has been fathering all the calves, is being conducted. Skin samples are collected from cows and their calves, as well as putative fathers, and these will be analysed by DNA fingerprinting. A behavioural study investigating the ranging patterns of the elephants and the social interactions between them is also under way. Additionally, a study of the effects of using contraceptive methods on elephants is being initiated in the park.

All this research will provide information relevant to questions concerning the management of the elephant population and thereby ensuring the future of Addo's elephants.

South Africa Reading

South Africa's Biotic Wealth
South Africa: Kruger National Park
Garden Route Activities
The Garden Route
Wild Frontier -Eastern Cape
The Wild Coast
Namaqualand
Namaqualand and more
Greater Addo National Park
Ndumo Game Reserve
HLUHLUWE-UMFOLOZI PARK
The Lowveld –Birding
ADDO ELEPHANTS
Drakensburg UNESCO World Heritage Site