Knysna elephants

The Knysna elephants were the relicts of once substantial herds of African bush elephant (Loxodonta africana) in the Outeniqua/Tsitsikamma region of southernmost South Africa. In 2019 it was determined that the once significant herds have been reduced to a lone adult female.

Elephant herds roamed the southern tip of Africa into the 19th century and the 20th century with the San people, who were the original human inhabitants of the southern Cape, being the first people to chronicle elephants’ presence in the forest, and often depicted them in their rock art". While contact with European farmers and hunters led to their decimation in the Southern Cape of South Africa, it is conjectured that about 1,000 elephants retracted into, and historically roamed, the Outeniqua/Tsitsikamma area.

The mystique of the Knysna elephants reached world-wide acclaim in the 1984 novel Kringe in die Bos/Circles in the Forest penned by Dalene Matthee. Through the novel's telling of the mystical kinship between its lead character Saul Barnard - a woodcutter determined is to prevent the destruction of the Kynsna Forest during the gold rush - and bull elephant legendary Old Foot/Oupoot (for whom the last surviving Knysna elephant is affectionately named by some), the novel highlighted the plight of the Knysna elephants impacted by human encounter. Quotes such as “The elephant is the soul of the forest. If the elephants go, the forest will die” and "They are the last great ones, ghosts in the trees, walking the paths of their ancestors” stirred her audiences fascination with the elephants and a commitment to their plight.

By 1994 it was believed only a single, female elephant remained, however, a 2006 DNA analysis of dung samples by Lori Eggert, Gareth Patterson and Jesús Maldonado countered these beliefs and claimed that: "The elephants of the Knysna region continue to survive, despite fears that there was only a single surviving female" moving within an area of 60,000 hectares of forest managed by SANParks – the only unfenced elephant group in South Africa. This study was however later challenged by SANParks which asserted that the form of DNA testing used by Patterson was not reliable as it had to rely on dung rather than blood or tissue and that stronger evidence indicated the presence of only one remaining female elephant.