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Addo Elephant National Park is an elephant park situated close
to Port Elizabeth in South Africa and is recognized as one of
the country's twenty national parks.
The
original section of the park was founded in 1931, in part due to
Sydney Skaife, in order to provide a sanctuary for the eleven
remaining elephants in the area. The park has proved to be very
successful and currently houses more than 450 elephants, 400
Cape buffalo, over 48 endangered black rhino as well as a
variety of antelope species. Lion and spotted hyena has also
recently been re-introduced to the area. A species unique to the
area is the flightless dung beetle, namely Circellium bacchus.
Flightless dung beetleThe original park has subsequently been
expanded to include the Woody Cape Nature Reserve that extends
from the Sundays River mouth towards Alexandria and a marine
reserve, which includes St. Croix Island and Bird Island, an
important breeding habitat for gannets and penguins, not to
mention a large variety of other marine life. Bird Island is
home to the world's largest breeding colony of gannets - about
120,000 birds - and also hosts the second largest breeding
colony of African penguins. This forms part of the plan to
expand the 1,480 km² Addo National Elephant Park into a 3,600
km² Greater Addo Elephant National Park.
The
expansion has meant not only that the park contains five of
South Africa's seven major vegetation zones (biomes) but also
that it is probably the only park in the world to house the
so-called "Big 7" (elephant, rhinoceros, lion, buffalo, leopard,
whale and great white shark) in their natural habitat.
The
park receives about 120,000 visitors annually. International
visitors make up 54% of this number, with German, Dutch and
British nationals making up the majority.
ElephantsThere is a main and four other rest camps as well four
camps run by concessionaires.
The
main entrance as well as two looped tourist roads in the park
are tarred while the others are graveled. There is also an
additional access road through the southern block of the park
feeding off the N2 highway near Colchester; it joins up with the
existing tourist roads in the park. |