The Addo Elephant National Park in South Africa was established 94 years ago to protect the last 11 elephants in the Eastern Cape region. Since then, the reserve has expanded to 155,000 hectares and today it’s home to lions, leopards, rhino, buffalo and more than 600 elephants. It also has 16 rivers and 437 wetlands. Freshwater scientists Nancy Job and Dirk Roux were part of a team who co-authored the South African National Parks and South African National Biodiversity Institute’s first ever inventory of the park’s rivers and wetlands. With an inventory in place, the park is better placed to conserve wetlands for South Africa and plan for the future.
What wetlands exist in the Addo Elephant National Park?
A wetland is a piece of land that is flooded with salt or fresh water most of the time. There are 437 wetlands of different types in the Addo park. To locate all the wetlands in the park, we conducted field surveys in close collaboration with the park staff. We were blown away by the exceptionally diverse landscapes we found. These ranged from arid inland steep rocky mountains and low-lying plains to higher altitude grassy ridges to sandy shores.
