FRONTIER NEWS
Addo Elephant park celebrates 90 years By Fayroush Ludick
Addo’s 90th staff celebration
Addo Elephant National Park’s 90th birthday was a muted affair at the beginning of July due to the country’s Adjusted Level 4 Covid Regulations in place at the time – which saw a restriction on gatherings. However, staff hope to celebrate the occasion belatedly in September with the joint national launch of SA National Parks Week in the Park. Addo was proclaimed in 1931. It has grown exponentially since then – from conserving the last remaining 11 elephants in the area on 4 500 hectares nine decades ago, to now being home to over 600 elephants and a diversity of other species and landscapes over 176 000 terrestrial hectares and a further 114 000 marine hectares which make up the Addo Elephant National Park Marine Protected Area. A social media campaign under #90FactsIn90Days and #AddoTurns90 gained quite a lot of traction in the months leading up to the 90th, looking back at the Park’s rich history. 90 ADDO FACTS 1. Addo Elephant National Park was proclaimed in 1931 (Government Gazette No 243 dated 3 July 1931).
2. The sole purpose of the proclamation was to protect the Eastern Cape’s last 11 remaining elephants. 3. Former Park Manager, Graham Armstrong, invented an elephant-proof fence so effective at keeping animals within the confines of the Park in the 1950s that it is still used in sections today. 4. The Park’s mission: Addo Elephant National Park seeks to be a key role player in providing benefits to society by being well integrated into the regional landscape, conserving and restoring the characteristic terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity, as well as ecological processes and cultural, historical and scenic resources of the Algoa Bay to Karoo gradient. 5. Addo is the third largest national park in South Africa. 6. Addo Elephant National Park stretches from Woody Cape in the south (the area between Bushman’s River mouth in the east and Sundays River mouth in the west), moving northwards across the area originally known as Olifantsplaat and Vetmaakvlakte, across the original elephant enclosure, across to the Nyathi Concession area, encompassing a large part of the Zuurberg mountain range, moving westwards, and then northwards across the Zuurberg to the Darlington Dam area up to the R400. 7. On 4 April 2005, former Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, Marthinus
conserving nature since 1926
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