‘And there was one’
Conservationists weigh up future of last free-roaming elephant tracked in camera-trap survey in Knysna forest
suggest that she has not had a calf in a long time, if ever.
Kerley adds that she appears to be in reasonably good condition with the exception of her swollen temporal glands with excessive temporal streaming, suggests that she is experiencing stress, very possibly as a result of being alone.
“Considering all these factors, the debate about how we have allowed this population to go functionally extinct and how to manage the last elephant is very emotional and very serious as she is a symbol of how we are treating biodiversity as a whole,” he says.
“It is a societal responsibility as we have forced these elephants, which are savanna elephants, into inhospitable forest habitats as a result of hundreds of years of hunting them and chasing them out of their natural habitat.” The leaves of the Knysna forest trees are low in protein and high in fibre – a poorquality food. Most of the forest canopy is 30m-40m high, and out of browsing reach.
By deduction, the Knysna elephants supplement their diet on the forest edge and in the fynbos.
Historicall,y the Knysna elephants roamed in their thousands as a continuous population for hundreds of kilometres along the southern Cape coast. They had access to thickets, fynbos and Karoo habitat. Over the past 300-odd years they were forced, as a result of persecution and human encroachment, to retreat into the forest as a refugee population.