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Major P.J. Pretorius and the decimation of the Addo elephant herd in 1919-1920: Important reassessments
Abstract
Between June 1919 and August 1920, the largest population of elephants in South Africa at the time was reduced from about 130 to 16 individuals by one man. Major P. J. Pretorius. Conflict between farmers and the elephants over dwindling water resources, coupled with the threat that the elephants posed to the future agricultural development of the region, precipitated the Provincial Administration's extermination order. Major Pretorius' figure of "120-odd" elephants killed during the year is reasonably accurate and the fate of the animal products is traced. Most of the skins were processed, by Pretorius himself, to make whips. A few specimens can be traced to local and overseas museums. Because records of the sex and age of animals killed by Major Pretorius have either been lost or were never detailed, reconstruction of the Addo elephant herd before the decimation, is difficult. Finally, details of the alleged public debate are discussed. It is concluded that it was probably a handful of individuals that convinced the Provincial Administration to spare 16 animals. The Rev J.R.L. Kingon as well as Major Pretorius himself are two key figures in the debate. There is little evidence to confirm the view that a public outcry, in the modem sense of the word, stopped the killing. Six photographs are included as an appendix. They show Major Pretorius at work in the Addo Bush.
... At that stage, there were only 12 elephants and the number subsequently dropped to 11 (Hall-Martin 1980, Hoffman 1993. Today, the elephant population in the park has risen to over 400, and the park has gained international recognition for its elephant conservation (Woodd 1999). ...
... At that stage, there were only 12 elephants and the number subsequently dropped to 11 (Hall-Martin 1980, Hoffman 1993. Today, the elephant population in the park has risen to over 400, and the park has gained international recognition for its elephant conservation (Woodd 1999). ...
... Following extensive hunting in the region (Hoffman, 1993), the MC section of AENP was established in 1931 and fenced to protect 11 elephants that consisted of two adult bulls, one subadult bull, and the remainder of adult females and their young (Whitehouse & Kerley, 2002). The two adult bulls were shot, the last remaining subadult bull was killed by a train, and subsequently 9 years went by without recruitment after the first fences were installed. ...
Disturbances that change population structure may evoke transient dynamics that can be assessed within a demographic resilience framework. Conservation management interventions are conceptually disturbances that can be evaluated through such a framework to inform management actions and goals. The Main Camp in Addo Elephant National Park in South Africa presents a case study. Here management reduced the size of the elephant (Loxodonta africana) population by ~26%. We compared population growth, modelled trends, constructed life tables and parameterized population projection matrices from data collected before, during and after the interventions. The interventions reduced population size and density, but co‐occurring droughts may have reduced subsequent population growth and stage‐specific survival. Transient dynamics followed the interventions and droughts and were associated with an unstable stage structure. The effect of adult survival on modelled asymptotic growth (its elasticity) was greater than a change in fertility. However, lowered juvenile survival contributed most to changes in transient growth. Management plans for elephant populations should consider the length of transients induced by interventions and environmental disturbances such as droughts. Our approach can benefit the assessment of population responses of elephants to disturbances such as poaching and persistent droughts elsewhere in Africa.
... Despite the killings, elephants ventured out of their hideouts in forest or thicket to raid crops, resulting in even heavier responses from local human populations, sometimes through systematic shootings, as with the mass shooting of elephants by Major P.J. Pretorius in the years 1919e1920, allegedly claiming 119 elephants in the Addo Bush area alone, and 5 in the Knysna Fores (Greig, 1982;Hoffman, 1993). Two of the specimens sampled for the present study were elephant remains were the result of such killings. ...
This study tests the association between opal phytoliths in dental calculus on modern, historic, and prehistoric specimens of Loxodonta africana (African savanna elephant) with their local and regional vegetation. The modern samples were obtained from dental remains from deceased animals at the Addo Elephant National Park (Eastern Cape Province) and the Pilanesberg National Park & Game Reserve (Northwest Province) in the Republic of South Africa. The historic and prehistoric specimens, presumed to be free-roaming elephants, were sampled from museum collections in the Eastern Cape and Western Cape Provinces. In addition to comparing phytolith assemblages in dental calculus with those of the main vegetation associations, this study assesses the phytolith assemblage differences between free-roaming and park elephants.
This file is the entire book manuscript, with a few uncorrected bits here and there. It would have been too expensive to publish as a hard copy. The book is an introductory guide and streamlined history (and prehistory) of Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe, famous for its elephants and other wildlife. There are 10 chapters, a lengthy bibliography, and many color illustrations
This article examines conflict between farmers and elephants in the Addo region in 1910s–1930s South Africa to explore the porosity of the concepts ‘wild’, ‘tame’, and ‘domestic’, and their relationship to race, degeneration, nature conservation, and colonialism. In the 1910s, settler farmers indicted the ‘Addo Elephants’, as ‘vicious’ thieves who raided crops and ‘hunted’ farmers. This view conflicted with a widespread perception of elephants as docile, sagacious, and worthy of protection. Seeking to reconcile these views, bureaucrats were divided between exterminating the animals, creating a game reserve, and drawing upon the expertise of Indian mahouts to domesticate them. Ultimately, all three options were attempted: the population was decimated by hunter Phillip Jacobus Pretorius, an elephant reserve was created, the animals were tamed to ‘lose their fear of man’ and fed oranges. Despite the presence of tame elephants and artificial feeding, the reserve was publicized as a natural habitat, and a window onto the prehistoric. This was not paradoxical but provokes a need to rethink the relationship between wildness, tameness, and domesticity. These concepts were not implicitly opposed but existed on a spectrum paralleling imperialist hierarchies of civilization, race, and evolution, upon which tame elephants could still be considered wild.
The purpose of environmental history is to probe the nexus between humans and nature (the environment). Like all historical studies, environmental history relies on the critical evaluation of sources, usually but not exclusively the written word. Moran asserts that literary studies and history have had a close but problematic relationship, and this may well be evident in what follows.1 This chapter is based on a selection of nonfiction relating to elephants in southern Africa produced over the course of more than a century.2 Considering how hunting, killing, and managing elephants has been expressed in nonfiction elucidates changing attitudes toward this species, the environment, and ecopolitics and demonstrates transformations within our constructions of nature and culture. Elephants seem to be particularly appropriate subjects for such an analysis because they are the largest of the charismatic African land mammals and bear a special burden of cultural constructs and ethics.3 As arguments about the future of elephants clearly show, people are polarized, debates around conflicting value systems are sharpened, and emotions are highly charged. Discussing African elephants in terms of current environmental historiography is also appropriate. The "animal turn" in the social sciences has proliferated in the field of ecocriticism,4 although a good deal of this literature is avowedly political, even polemic.5 Nonetheless, Harriet Ritvo argues that there is currently more "animal history" because of the political purchase and high profile of animal-related causes as well as the growth of environmental history.6 Both Ritvo and Keith Thomas have pointed out that the history of the treatment of animals tells us a great deal about human societies.7 Thomas (Man and the Natural World, 166) identified the contexts in which an anthropocentric tradition was eroded, while John MacKenzie gave the natural world a dominant role in the imperial enterprise.8 Considering elephants provides a rich gateway into aspects of human thinking, especially in connection with current changes in interspecies ethics. 9 Elephants, together with a number of other animal genera, are spearheading the increasingly vocal animal rights movement, a development that historian and wilderness advocate Roderick Nash foresaw many years ago. On the basis of an ever-extending network of rights that he suggested had incrementally included slaves, women, and indigenous people, Nash argued that animals would be "liberated," and eventually so would the environment itself.10 In some respects these debates can be encapsulated by considering the growing political relevance of nonhuman animals (and the radicalization of the animal rights movement) as well as the contrasting philosophies of sustainable use and the primacy of any animal's right to life. Moreover, Jamieson has referred to the opposition between "animal values" and the "value of nature" (or ecocentrism). Critics of the animal rights ethical framework have referred to its ideas as equal to anthropomorphism, that is, as similar to the obsession with humans.
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