Greater Addo National Park

Elephant-viewing here rates among the best in the world, and at places like the Hapoor waterhole even breeding herds go about their business as if there were no humans in sight.

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Gone are the days when conservationists believed in the concept of one biome, one national park. Biodiversity has become a key word in conservation circles, and it is now understood that large areas of protected land are required to maintain biodiversity. Thus when it was suggested, as long ago as 1993, that the Eastern Cape offered an ideal opportunity to put theory into practice by extending the borders of the Addo Elephant National Park both inland and towards the coast, people began to dream of seeing elephants roaming the dunes at Woody Cape...

That 1993 suggestion gained substance four years later when Professor Graham Kerley and Dr Andr Boshoff of the University of Port Elizabeth’s Terrestrial Ecology Research Unit produced A Proposal for a Greater Addo National Park: A Regional and National Conservation Opportunity. Their proposal received unanimous support at a meeting of stakeholders early in 1999, and Dr Michael Knight, Scientific Services Manager at SANParks, and his team swung into action, negotiating with government agencies, private landowners and the public to set about making the dream come true.

By 2001 the platform had taken shape. The Global Environment Facility (GEF) had made large contributions towards the planning and implementation processes, while the Humane Society of the United States, the International Fund for Animal Welfare and donors such as the Leslie Hill Succulent Karoo Trust had made it possible to purchase land, increasing the parks extent from 56 000 to more than 125 000 hectares.
The tapestry of state and private land that will make up the Greater Addo National Park (GANP) spans five of South Africas seven terrestrial biomes Nama Karoo, Fynbos, Thicket, Succulent Karoo and Afromontane Forest at altitudes ranging from sea level to 1 010 metres. A transition zone between summer- and winter-rainfall areas, the expanded park would protect a diverse range of habitats and a number of endemic species.

It all began with the Addo Elephant National Park, proclaimed in 1931 to protect the last 11 elephants in the region. This park has increased in size from 2250 to over 13 500 hectares, and its elephant population now stands at more than 350. Elephant-viewing here rates among the best in the world, and at places like the Hapoor waterhole even breeding herds go about their business as if there were no humans in sight. But Addo is not just about elephants Cape buffalo, black rhino, eland, kudu, bat-eared fox, tortoises, birds and a myriad insects, including the intriguing flightless dung beetle, all play a part in the great scheme of biodiversity.

Addo also conserves thicket, a spekboom-dominated vegetation that includes euphorbias, aloes and bulbous plants. According to environmental botanist Professor Richard Cowling, this is all that is left of an ancient system that once spread right across the continent. Unlike fynbos and grasslands which are fire-driven, thicket relies on elephants and other large mammals to provide nutrients, disperse seeds and create spaces between the larger shrubs in which animals and smaller plants can live.

North of Addo the proposed park embraces the former Zuurberg Forest Reserve, where an undulating landscape is covered with fynbos, thicket and evergreen forest. Ironwood, yellowwood, assegai and white stinkwood trees choke the ravines, Knysna louries call in the forest and black saw-wing swallows and black and crowned eagles soar overhead. Shy grey rhebok, mountain reedbuck and bushbuck find sanctuary here, as do Cape mountain zebra and blue duiker.

Beyond Zuurberg, the GANP plunges westward into the arid Karoo Basin, where the 4 350-hectare Darlington Dam and more than 5 000 hectares of surrounding Karoo plains have recently been acquired. The vegetation here changes dramatically from fynbos to the dwarf succulent shrubs of the Nama Karoo. Only six per cent of this biome is formally conserved in South Africa and this area is particularly special because it includes a sensitive succulent veld type called Noorsveld. The name comes from the Afrikaans word noors, or surly, and describes the rather unfriendly-looking euphorbias that dominate the landscape. Despite their latex sap and spiny thorns, these plants are readily consumed by black rhinos, which have been re-introduced and are guarded in a secured section of the park. The rhinos are breeding extremely well, and females with their calves (frequently two) are often seen in the early morning and late afternoon.

The enormous size of the intended park can best be appreciated by driving from Darlington Dam in the north-west to the sea in the south-east, a journey that will take nearly three hours. At the coast, the former Woody Cape Nature Reserve will form the core of the GANP coastal area. It includes both vegetated and unvegetated dunes, and its 120-square-kilometre dunefields contain the largest and least degraded mobile dunes in South Africa. Up to 150 metres high, these dunes are the only known habitat for several rare species, including the dune grasshopper and the pygmy hairy-footed gerbil. Behind the narrow coastal strip of dunes, and south of Alexandria, lies Alexandria Forest, where the orchid-laced canopy of yellowwoods and coral trees provides habitat for primates, birds and insects, and the rare tree dassie at the southern tip of its range.

From the dunes at Woody Cape it is quite easy to make out Bird Island, another component of the GANP dream. The island includes the largest gannet colony in South Africa and provides breeding sites for the roseate tern, one of the most endangered of all seabirds. It is hoped that in due course the park will also encompass a marine section stretching 50 kilometres from Woody Cape to the Sundays River mouth. This area would serve as a breeding ground for threatened fish stocks and territory for Brydes and southern right whale, humpback and bottlenose dolphins and great white sharks.

Since the recent acquisition of a 2 500-hectare strip of coastline near Colchester, just one patch of land near the Sundays River mouth is still missing from the grand GANP puzzle. It is, however, an extremely important patch as the estuary is one of only 37 rivers in South Africa that flow freely to the sea and is ranked eighth in terms of its biodiversity and conservation importance.

For dreamers it is wonderful to think that one day soon elephants and other animals may be able to migrate freely throughout this entire system and turn up on the beach at Woody Cape. But there is a real threat to the dream the harbour and industrial development at Coega. When complete it will become an ugly blemish on the landscape, visible from within the boundaries of the park and likely to cause pollution that would be blown into the area by the prevailing winds. It has been estimated that this would cost the GANP about R50-million a year in lost tourism revenue, as well as many jobs.

Already some 114000 visitors (50 per cent of whom are foreign) come to this part of the Eastern Cape each year. Once the GANP is in full swing, it is reasonable to expect many more, creating the potential to generate an estimated 5 700 jobs. In addition to the positions in the park, there will be spin-off from car-hire companies, shops, restaurants and private lodges. SANParks provides chalets, bush camps and camping within the park, but has also begun to grant concessions to private companies. The first of these, Gorah Elephant Camp, has employed and trained more than 30 local people, and its luxury tented accommodation is getting rave reviews overseas. A second concession, Nyati, has recently been granted in the southern Zuurberg foothills, and there are scores of privately run guesthouses on the parks borders.

In the Zuurberg there are hiking and horse-riding trails, a rustic bush camp and the privately run Zuurberg Inn, which has been offering hospitality for more than a hundred years. SANParks provides a handful of rudimentary self-catering cottages at Darlington Dam, while at nearby Darlington Lodge a popular activity is black rhino viewing. There are no facilities in the Algoa Bay section as yet, but forests and dunefields can be explored on the 32-kilometre Alexandria Trail.

The good news is that more and more land in the area is being turned over to conservation and donors have committed themselves to purchasing suitable new lands with a vision of turning the GANP into a park larger than 3 500 square kilometres. The GEF has also pledged several million dollars to the next leg of the process. Meanwhile the government has promised R56-million to the area for poverty relief. One thing is sure. Thanks to the swelling borders of the GANP, things in the Eastern Cape will never be quite the same.

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