KRUGER NATIONAL PARK's SELF DESTRUCTION   -  A LESSON FROM TSAVO IN KENYA
Channel: SONDEL
Date: 2024-01-20

A lesson for South Africa's Kruger National Park.

The 2,2 million hectare Tsavo Reserve in Kenya suffered an ecological catastrophe over half a century ago when the burgeoning elephant population there transformed a once evergreen, dense vegetation that was impervious to fire, limited visibility to a mere 50 meters, to the desert it is now. Through their "ecological engineering" the elephants in Tsavo transformed the vegetation from a balanced woodland to a grassland which then became prone to fires. In the process the nutritional value of the food source, not only for the elephant but also for other species was depleted removing the woodland's leafy presentation needed by browsers. This led to the demise and extinction of the 8 000 strong black rhino population, already under threat from poaching, whose habitat was destroyed through the said ecological engineering. A two-year drought in 1970 caused an estimated 15 000 elephants to die of malnutrition in one fell swoop. The elephants effectively self-destructed through their depletion of the nutritional value of the food source but in the process caused many browsing and tree-living species to be extirpated from the reserve. No longer are there any lesser kudu, no bushbuck, and far far fewer gerenuk.

The Kruger National Park, after 30 years, is now halfway down the same path to reaching the same kind of ecological disaster that, over a span of 60 years, befell Tsavo.