Page 32 - Waterfall January 2022

Waterfall nature

they block roads with uprooted trees
because they mistake them as dongas.

It was a pretty theory but that’s all
it was – like the fanciful story that
elephants get drunk from eating
fermented marula berries. Jamie
uys, the film producer, once filmed
elephants, supposedly drunk
on marula when, in fact, they’d
been deliberately drugged.

There is little doubt that the marulas
along the S3 to Pretoriuskop have
all been killed by elephants. But why
would they pick on a species whose
abundant and highly nutritious
berries they so relish? Why pick
on these last few marulas?

It makes slightly more sense
where mopanes are concerned.
Demolishing these tall trees so that
the next generation of elephants
can browse their leaves at head-
height makes some sort of sense.

But their demolition, their total
destruction of marulas seems so
counter-productive. It makes no
sense. Maybe they pick on marulas
along the S3 because there’s not
much else left? They, and veld
fires have, after all, subdued the
growth of other kinds of tall trees.

And what will be the climax
vegetation? Grassland? Or will it
turn to thornveld, a la Zululand?

Maybe they prefer grassland? Maybe
treeless grassland was the original
landscape? Nobody knows.

A crucial question is: are there
too many elephants? If so, will the
thousands of square kilometres in
Mozambique, relatively recently
added to the park’s conservation area,
help absorb surplus elephants?

I have used up my quota of question
marks and must leave it to readers
to wonder about the evolutionary
implications. Perhaps some bright
young postgraduate will devote his
or her PhD to solving the mystery. Marula trees near Pretoriuskop wrecked by elephants.

30 Waterfall Issue 1 2022