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Has Gareth Patterson found a host of Knysna elephants?Within minutes of meeting Gareth Patterson, I am aware of his affinity for nature. Sometimes called an “environmental activist” (a term increasingly losing its sting), he is renowned for exposing the evils of canned lion hunting and for his work with George Adamson’s orphaned lions.
We sit in the genteel surrounds of the Vineyard Hotel in Cape Town and Gareth instinctively identifies the different starling species fighting for the butter on an adjacent table. He spots the resident tortoise foraging on the urbane lawns and guesses at its age.
I soon understand that animals are his milieu while perhaps people seem a little strange to him – who can blame him?
His book, The Secret Elephants, is a wonderful journey into the life and often tragic history of the Knysna elephants. The book gives a good synopsis of man’s interaction with these elusive leviathans and sadly, it is mostly a tale of greed and destruction.
Furthermore, it is a terrible blight on the history of European colonialism in the Southern Cape and the colonists’ supreme disregard for the indigenous people and animals.
In November 1876, Captain Harison, Conservator of Forests, estimated that between 400 and 500 elephants lived in “Outeniqualand”, which comprised a 200-kilometre strip of land cradled by mountains and sea.
Their number had dwindled to 20 elephants by 1920, whereupon the self-styled “Jungle Man” and egotistical lunatic PJ Pretorius set out on an elephant hunt in Knysna Forest.
Not only did he decimate at least five elephants on this hunt (although only authorised to shoot one), but he repeatedly killed in order to film the massacre from the best possible angle!
This particularly odious example of humanity represents the worst excesses of ‘civilised’ man putting greed and ego before all else.
Between ivory hunters, men who found sport in the ritual slaughter of the elephants, avaricious avatars searching for gold in the forests and loggers decimating ancient habitats for a few shekels, the elephants did not stand a chance. Or so it was thought.
The Secret Elephants is a book about more than merely our fetid past.
In 2001 Wilfred Oraai, a South African National Parks (SANParks) ranger, is reputed to have spotted a young bull elephant while working in the Knysna Forest. This was significant because the official SANParks position on the Knysna elephants was that only one ageing female still lived in the forest, commonly referred to as “The Matriarch”.
In turn, the officials claimed that the Knysna elephants were “functionally extinct”. Doubt existed over the veracity of the evidence, and to some extent, this doubt still lingers.
One would think it would be easy to spot a five-tonne mammal ripping trees apart like toothpicks and leaving droppings the size of dachshunds, but the forest is dense and these pachyderms can be as silent as the night when need be.
Early in 2001, Gareth finished writing and promoting his book To Walk with Lions and decided to move to the Southern Cape with his girlfriend, Fransje, to embark on an independent and ‘low-key’ study of the Knysna elephants. In the book, he states that he “felt very strongly that this was something that [he] just had to do.”
Intuition and instinct seem to guide much of Gareth’s life and it has served him well. This book is unashamedly not a scientific research document, but rather one man’s passionate quest to discover the mysteries and habits of the Knysna elephants.
At times, the book verges on the esoteric with the following description of the Knysna Forest being a good example: “It is an enchanted place. These great forest trees, I am sure, have souls. Because they are so big, so unmoving, one would expect them to be like monuments, cold and still. But they are not. The forest trees pulsate with an invisible life and energy, and each tree is very much an individual. Each has its unique sense of presence. In the forests, I am among a crowd of individual beings.”
For a modern urban African, this sort of thinking seems fuzzy, but I have to admit that there is an ‘energy’ in the Knysna Forest that defies description.
All credit to Gareth for having the courage to express these thoughts openly. There are numerous other elements to his research and methodologies which defy conventional wisdom, but far from being a drawback, these add colour and spice to his quest and to the book.
I make these observations not to discredit the book or the research, but to highlight the scope and difficulty of the undertaking. As mentioned, the Knysna Forest is incredibly dense and inaccessible in many parts. Add to this the fact that the elephants are known to graze on Fynbos in the mountains around the forest, and the scope of their domain becomes vast – more than 900km2.
Gareth employed a number of techniques to study the elephants, including tracking spoor and analysing dung samples.
Three years into his research, he came across the work of Lori Eggert, “an American conservation geneticist whose principal research focuses on non-invasive means of providing information for the effective management of declining species, secretive or dangerous animals in general, and elephants in particular.
“During this research, she developed a genetic censusing method for forest elephants using DNA extracted from dung samples.”
Lori’s studies encompassed the forest elephants of the Kakum National Park in Ghana, but after making contact with Gareth, they felt it would be useful in determining the scope and range of the Knysna elephants.
Gareth spent a period of four months collecting dung samples in the central range of the elephants, as well as in the west beyond the Knysna River.
With the specialised equipment sent to him from Washington by Lori, he collected 35 samples and sent them off for DNA analysis. The findings revealed the DNA of five different female elephants – more than were previously acknowledged by the authorities, and seemingly clear evidence that the Knysna elephants were on the path to sustainability.
It was troublesome that there was no DNA for male elephants, but Gareth put that down to the difficulty of actually finding enough dung samples in the dense forest.
The samples also indicated the dung bolus of a baby elephant, thus indicating the regeneration of the species.
The photographic evidence of the Knysna elephants in the book is self-explanatory, but despite numerous sightings by various people over the years, one only ever sees one elephant in any photograph.
To my untrained eye, although Gareth identifies them as different elephants (which he has nicknamed in order to differentiate them in the book), the elephants look very similar in most of the pictures. At this point, I thought I should interrogate the facts and the evidence further, but I realised this would accomplish very little.
Either one takes Gareth’s evidence at face value, or not. Whether there is one remaining elephant, or an entire host of grey phantoms patrolling the Knysna Forest, Gareth Patterson has brought the history and plight of the Knysna elephants to the fore, at a time when Western civilisation is finally becoming aware of the true value of natural wilderness.
Having nearly decimated the elephants (and many other wild species) of the Southern Cape (“The world’s most southerly elephants”), it seems we are desperate to have them back and to preserve their habitat as a national park. To this end, the Garden Route National Park was gazetted officially on 6 March 2009. Eco-tourism has probably saved the elephant’s hide.
Gareth looks almost embarrassed when I mention the Agogwe – a mythical bipedal ape said to have been spotted in and around the Knysna Forest.
This is another of the charming anecdotes in The Secret Elephants, although this cynic struggles to believe in a little furry cousin living in the forests just outside Plettenberg Bay – I think they mistook them for one of the furry bagel hounds that hang out at the Beacon Island Hotel over Christmas...
The Secret Elephants is easy to read and the subject matter is fascinating. Gareth Patterson has put a great deal of work into the project and it is well researched and thought through.
For a while, it troubled me that he still could not say for certain how many elephants roam the Knysna Forest, but this feeling waned quickly. The fact remains that these incredible beasts have survived everything that man has thrown at them.
The forest that conceals them is not willing to give up her secrets so easily.
Since reading The Secret Elephants, I have been filled by a strong desire to return to the Knysna Forest. I yearn to be bathed in the dappled light and to listen to the sounds of the forest. I will have one ear cocked for the sound of crashing trees, but regardless, I will know that ‘they’ still walk among us – the elephants of the Knysna forest.
The Secret Elephants is a worthy tribute to these mighty creatures.
George Joubert
Elephant paintings by Brent Meder
We recent found elephant dung in Knysna Forests *****//johngore******/proof-of-elephants-still-in-knysna-forests/ .