Arnoud Quanjer Wildlife Photography

Elephants which have exceptionally long tusks are generally known as 'Big Tuskers'. The Kruger National Park is renowned for its big tuskers, and its relative insulation from recent ivory poaching has allowed it to protect its gene pool. At Letaba restcamp there is even an elephant hall that details the life cycle, and displays the tusks and histories of some of the park’s big tuskers.

Recent developments  

Duke, the elephant with the largest set of ivory on any elephant presently living in the Kruger National Park (KNP) has broken his left tusk. But, like many tragedies, an amazing story of good fortune, effective use of technology, enthusiasm from the SANParks Website Forum members and good co-operation has surfaced with the recovery of the piece of ivory that used to grace Duke. To make this even more incredible is that it is the first time on record that a broken piece of ivory has been recovered that can be positively linked to one of the KNP’s legendary tuskers. With reasonable accurate information, Crocodile Bridge Section Ranger Neels van Wyk searched the supposed area where the tusk was last seen on foot without success on Tuesday August 21, 2007. On deciding that it was a bit like searching for a needle in a haystack, Van Wyk decided to recruit the help of Kruger’s Air Patrol Bantam Ultralight Aircraft and its pilot, Tshokwane Section Ranger Steven Whitfield. Unfortunately, the aircraft was scheduled to fly in the Phalaborwa Region on Wednesday August 22, 2007 and thus was only available on the morning of Thursday August 23, 2007. Supplied with information from SANParks Website Forum Members Wildtuinman, Bucky and Matthew, which included vital GPS co-ordinates, Whitfield and Van Wyk took off with trepidation because it was still very difficult to find something like a piece of ivory.

Article text © SANParks.org 2004-2007. Text used with permission. Full story here.

Historic big tuskers

Some years ago i received a file with pictures and full descriptions of the Big Tuskers of the Kruger National Park. The descriptions are very detailed giving the exact territories of these elephant and other interesting information. The pictures are absolutely wonderful and a wonderful boon for anyone planning on visiting the Park who would like to try and get to see these magnificent elephants.

Click this link to open the file or right-click it and select "Save target as..." from the menu to download the file and save it to your harddisk. The file is about 4.5MB so it will take some time to download it. The file is an Adobe PDF file which can be viewed on most major operating systems. You will need to have the Acrobat Reader software installed. If you don't have this software installed on your system then you can download it for free from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html