Page 24 - D11 Dainfern Precinct Living December 2021

NATURE

branches in what used to be the programmed to turn open forests There is little doubt that the
tree’s crown. into easily browsed head-high fodder marulas along the S3 to
banks? As one team of scientists put Pretoriuskop have all been killed
Did they extinguish this giant tree it: Have elephants gone into farming? by elephants. But why would they
simply to nibble at its top branches? pick on a species whose abundant
Surely not. One hears of elephants In the mid-1970s, I was invited, as and highly nutritious berries they so
during droughts knocking over trees an observer, to join a team seeking a relish? Why pick on these last few
to get at their succulent roots but strategy to defend South Africa‘s last marulas?
to habitually kill large trees for a ilala palm forest. These 15 to 20m
few minutes’ gratification makes no high trees produce spherical shiny It makes slightly more sense
ecological sense. hard nuts (from which vegetable where mopanes are concerned.
ivory is extracted) which elephants Demolishing these tall trees so that
Yet, according to one authority, also enjoy. The forest stood just the next generation of elephants
elephants in Kruger Park have, before Letaba’s main gate. can browse their leaves at head-
since the 1960s, killed off 95% of height makes some sort of sense.
the park’s big trees.
“To habitually kill large But their demolition, their total
I recall, in the 60s, north of Satara, trees for a few minutes’ destruction of marulas seems so
seeing kilometre after kilometre of gratification makes no counter-productive. It makes no
tall mopane trees, another species sense. Maybe they pick on marulas
favoured by elephants. In those ecological sense.” along the S3 because there’s not
days the single-stemmed 15 to 20m much else left? They, and veld fires
high standard mopanes with their The scientists hardly slept a wink have, after all, subdued the growth
tall green canopies rose from the on their first night because of the of other kinds of tall trees.
meadow-like landscape providing sound of palms crashing down. Next
shade for creatures grazing beneath. morning they stood shaking their And what will be the climax
The scene was park-like, the sort of heads: the country’s last palm forest vegetation? Grassland? Or will it
open woodland that Pierneef liked to had been demolished by elephants. turn to thornveld, a la Zululand?
paint. Maybe they prefer grassland?
I was told many years ago, when Maybe treeless grassland was the
Grazers abounded. Elephants, being ethology (animal behaviour) was in its original landscape. Nobody knows.
major grazers, also have a huge infancy and entailed a lot of surmise,
appetite for mopane leaves and that elephants, as a kind of instinctive A crucial question is: are there
will sometimes stand on their hind ‘civic duty’, often push trees into too many elephants? If so, will the
legs and stretch their trunks to six or dongas thus checking erosion – it thousands of square kilometres in
seven metres high to browse among was suggested they block roads with Mozambique, relatively recently
the branches. uprooted trees because they mistake added to the park’s conservation
them as dongas. area, help absorb surplus
Those hundreds of square kilometres elephants?
of this one time ‘parkland’ have, It was a pretty theory but that’s all
partly, thanks to elephants but also it was - like the fanciful story that I have used up my quota of
because of unplanned veld burning, elephants get drunk from eating question marks and must leave it
been converted into an almost fermented marula berries. Jamie to readers to wonder about the
unbroken sea of hedge-high mopane Uys, the film producer, once filmed evolutionary implications. Perhaps
scrub. Elephants no longer need to elephants, supposedly drunk on some bright young postgraduate
stretch high up to browse. marula when, in fact, they’d been will devote his or her PhD to solving
Are elephants, perhaps, genetically deliberately drugged. the mystery.

Many remember this when it was open forest, a parklike landscape of tall, stand-alone mopane trees. Did elephants reduce it to
shrubbery, deliberately?
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