Explore The Western Cape
Heading east from Knysna along the N2, you come to the Knysna Elephant Park. The park was established in 1994 to provide a home for abandoned, orphaned and abused young elephants, and opened to the public in 2003. The youngest of its charges are reared by park staff, who hand-feed them forty litres of baby formula a day, and sleep next to them at night. Of the activities on offer, the most popular are the roughly hour-long tours, which leave every half hour, where you’ll get the chance to touch and feed one of the pachyderms. You can also take a two-hour ride on an elephant or a guided nature walk of the same duration alongside one.
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The Knysna elephants
The Knysna elephants
Traffic signs warning motorists about elephants along the N2 between Knysna and Plettenberg Bay are rather optimistic: there are few indigenous pachyderms left and, with such a large forest, sightings are rare. But such is the mystique attached to the Knysna elephants that locals tend to be a little cagey about just how few they number. By 1860, the thousands that had formerly wandered the once vast forests were down to five hundred, and by 1920 (twelve years after they were protected by law), there were only twenty animals left; the current estimate is three. Loss of habitat and consequent malnutrition, rather than full-scale hunting, seems to have been the principal cause of their decline.
The only elephants you’re guaranteed to see near Knysna are at the Knysna Elephant Park or the Elephant Sanctuary, both near Plettenberg Bay.
