The Kruger National Park (KNP) is considered to be one of Africa’s great elephant conservation strongholds, and in honour of World Elephant Day on August 12, SANParks commemorated its efforts to protect the elephant population in the park.
Right around the world, this commemorative day has been observed annually since 2012, to highlight the status of countries’ elephant management practices, allowing the opportunity to highlight the lessons learnt through both success stories and areas of challenge.
SANParks celebrated the 2024 World Elephant Day under the theme ‘Evidence-based conservation – The success story behind South Africa’s elephant management lessons’.
South Africa has around 44 000 elephants within the country’s boundaries, and the population has been increasing over the last century. Most of South Africa’s elephants can be found inside state-protected areas, while SANParks manages about 75% of the country’s elephants in five national parks.
The KNP has a total of about 30 000 elephants. About a further 800 are in the Addo Elephant National Park, about 600 in the Mapungubwe National Park, just under 400 in the Marakele National Park and one in the Garden Route National Park.
Lowveld Media journalist Blake Linder visited the Kruger on Saturday, August 10, prior to the celebration of World Elephant Day. There he experienced the full effects of these conservation and elephant management efforts, as the animal he spotted the most during his visit just happened to be elephants.
Linder snapped these photos during his visit there.
