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Addo is situated in the beautiful Sundays River Valley,
only 40 min from Port Elizabeth airport. The accessibility of this area
coupled with its close proximity to the Garden Route and Cape Town makes the
Addo Elephant Park and its surrounding areas an extremely desirable
destination that is already very popular with international visitors. The
Addo Elephant National Park was proclaimed in 1931 and today this finely
tuned ecosystem is home to over 400 elephants. This makes the Addo Park the
most concentrated elephant reserve in Africa thus giving one a good chance
of experiencing some of the best elephant viewing in the world. Apart from
elephants there are also lion, hyena, black rhino, buffalo and various
antelope species.
After widespread hunting in the 1800's and an
extermination program in the 1920's the Addo National Elephant Park was
proclaimed in 1931 as a sanctuary for the remaining 11 elephants. This herd
has build up to over 400 making it one of the densest populations of the
giant herbivores in the world.
Addo is one of the world's greatest
conservation success stories as the South African National Parks have
successfully formed long term partnerships with donor organisations one
being the International Fund for Animal Welfare. With these funds they are
busy buying additional land and recreating key migratory corridors and
expanding the Park to a proposed area of approximately 400 000 hectares
including a 60 000 hectare marine reserve - this will make it the most
biologically diverse park in Africa conserving 6 of this country's 7 biomes,
a total of 12 vegetation types and South Africa's second largest elephant
and black rhino populations.
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