Diario de anthonywalton

I know there is a school of thought prevalent in mammal conservation circles which suggests that forest-inhabiting Elephants in the Southern Cape are just relics of evasive behaviours of herds centuries ago which tried to take shelter from the onslaught of European hunters, and that regardless of how long they've spent in the forest, they aren't tied to it in any important ecological sense. I've long agreed with such a view as amongst other things, it goes a long way in explaining why re-introductions from Kruger have failed.
This book however, really challenges this thinking on many fronts
Some things I didn't know before reading this book:

1. The forests in the Garden Route impart a distinct mineral profile in Elephant diet. Namely, they are very low in Phosphorous, which causes an increase in pre-natal calf deaths and reduced calf/adult life spans; and they provide excess Calcium, which afflicts digestion of certain food sources and further inhibits intake of Phosphorous and other nutrients, stunting growth.
2. Elephants in this area had been encountered well before even the founding of George in 1811, and were frequently encountered by travellers on the road to Knysna and further still to Plettenberg Bay. Many people recorded that these Elephants spent more of their time in the Fynbos and grassland patches inbetween forests when first encountered, but spent enough time traversing through and foraging in forests so as to leave a network of established trails that even the first loggers in the area came to frequent and turn into roads for wagons. As people began to settle the grassland areas for farming, the Elephants would spend more time in the Fynbos and forests, but this is inferred to be a pattern of behaviour that began even before the arrival of the first Europeans and may have already started with the centuries old impact of veld fires that the San and Khoikhoi groups would set to flush out game.
3. The plight of the forest Elephants was already a concern in the late 1800's and as far back as 1908, they were declared Royal Game by the Crown Colony and hunting was tightly restricted. In the preceding 40 or so years before this declaration was made, their numbers had dropped from around 500 to just 20! This was owed to alot of unfortunate happenstance in the region which saw great influxes of people and inevitably hunters, such as the gold rush of Millwood and the demand for wagon wood at the outset of the Great Trek. The region became so full of people at one point that it is still suspected that many loggers at the time were incentivized to destroy Elephants on sight and smuggle their tusks to the Transvaal to get in on the illicit but highly profitable ivory trade.
4. In 1968, when there were only a mere 12-14 Elephants remaining in the most remote sections of these Forests, a survey was commissioned by the then Department of Nature Conservation into the mechanisms of elephant survival and fecundity in the Garden Route forests. The results were that these Elephants selected certain tree and plant species in the forests which through inherited experience, they had come to identify as the most palatable and nutritious such as Cape Beech and certain parts of the Keurboom (Virgillia oroboides). Furthermore, though their population only grew very slowly even in the absence of poaching and habitat loss, they were in effect still able to breed normally and produce reproductively viable offspring in these forest environments.

CONCLUSION
With these insights foremost in our minds, surely there is room to ponder the real relationship between Afrotemperate forests and the Elephants? Though 14 Elephants is not the greatest study sample one could have, could it be that grassland Elephants had an innate, natural response to climatic stresses in their normal habitats that was expressed as a collectivized retreat and residence in our temperate forests? Maybe what we think to be an artificially, man-induced behaviour isn't after all? Could the Knysna Elephant's occupation of closed canopy forests represent a shift in reproductive strategy towards delayed fertility and smaller output in exchange for more reliable recruitment, particularly in an episode of environmental stress?