About
The Knysna elephants are a very small number of African bush elephants (Loxodonta africana), a relict population of large herds which roamed the Tsitsikamma Forest and surrounding regions at the southern tip of Africa until the 1800s and 1900s, when contact with European farmers and hunters led to their near extinction. It is conjectured that about 1,000 elephants historically roamed the Outeniqua/Tsitsikamma area. Recent DNA analysis of dung samples has revealed the presence of at least 5 cows and possibly some bulls and calves, moving within an area of 121,000 hectares of forest managed by South African National Parks, and constituting the only unfenced elephant group in South Africa. By 2019, researchers have concluded that there is only one elephant, a mature female, remaining in Knysna. == History of decline == Before the arrival of the Bantu and European-origin settlers, the nomadic aboriginal people had refrained from hunting wildlife unsustainably. In two centuries the European settlers came close to obliterating the forests and hunting several species of large mammals to near extinction. Ivory hunting and loss of habitat to agriculture had all but exterminated elephants from the Cape region of Africa by 1900. The last elephant in the vicinity of the Cape peninsula was killed in 1704 and elephant populations west of the Knysna region were extirpated prior to 1800. By 1775 the remaining Cape elephants had retreated for their lives into forests along the foothills of the Outinequa / Tsitsikamma coastal mountain range around Knysna, and dense scrub-thickets of the Addo bush (Dudley 1976a). As far back as 1870 it was estimated that only some 400 elephants remained out of the enormous numbers that had been observed in and about these southern forests in earlier centuries. SOURCESWikipedia