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Kruger National Park Elephants
There were no elephants in Kruger National Park until 1905. Then ten elephants pitched up (from Mozambique) and took up residence in the Olifants/Letaba river junction area. This was the only immig…
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There were no elephants in Kruger National Park until 1905. Then ten elephants pitched up (from Mozambique) and took up residence in the Olifants/Letaba river junction area. This was the only immigration group ever recorded. But there MUST have been more if we are to account for the rapid increase in elephant numbers after 1905.
By the 1940s Mr. James Stevenson Hamilton (Snr Game Warden) and Albert Viljoen (Botanist), recognized a rise in elephant numbers and corresponding damage to ever more numbers of large trees in the park. And in 1944 Viljoen set about demarcating large numbers of one-hectare research plots in the Satara area of the park – and the location, the species, and the numbers of every tree with a canopy spread of 15 meters or more were recorded, measured, and mapped in every one of the research sample plots. The result: the average number of these (what Viljoen called “top canopy trees”) in these research plots was 13 trees per hectare.”
The Satara area was selected for this experiment because Viljoen believes that its deciduous woodland properties were a good reflection of the deciduous woodlands growing elsewhere throughout the national park. At first, the trees were checked annually for tree damage.
What became known as the Satara Top Canopy Tree Study then began in earnest.