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On 4 September 2001, a fire raged through the Pretoriuskop area of the Kruger Park tragically killing 23 people and injuring 11 others. The final report of the commission of inquiry into the fire has been released.
Did you know that the hottest temperature ever recorded in the Kruger Park was at Shingwedzi on 26 February 1992. The air temperature reached 48deg Celsius!
The latest overnight option in the Kruger National Park was unveiled to the public for the first time on Tuesday. The new Tsendze Rustic Campsite has been designed for those campers who wish to break away from the more modern campsites available in the KNP. Like Maroela Campsite near Orpen Camp and Gate, Tsendze Rustic Campsite like its name suggests will offer campers their very own camp that they do not have to share with their brick and mortar-orientated fellow visitors
The Kruger Park is an elongated area approximately 345km long (north to south) and averaging about 54km wide.
According to SABC News (October 13, 2006) rangers have enlisted a powerful four-legged ally. Grant, a four-year-old Border collie, has been trained to detect wildlife products by their scent. His handler, police Inspector Oosie Oosthuizen, says Grant will find what he is looking for, even if it is stashed inside a car or hidden underground. Grant will be helping Kruger National Park staff and traffic officials in their dogged fight against poaching.
Between 1966 to 1994 Kruger National Park culled more than 16,000 elephants before a moratorium was put into effect.
Continue reading "Alternative to Elephant Culling in Kruger Park" »
Colonization, and the weapons it brought with it, ended the balance that existed between man and nature in Africa. Europeans brought with them a demand for wildlife products like hides and ivory that set off a booming commercial hunting industry.
Continue reading "Establishment of the Kruger National Park" »
During the Iron Age, inhabitants between Phalaborwa and Balule traded in copper. Then Arab traders arrived in search of gold and ivory, and in the Late Iron Age, in search of slaves. Although there are no written records nor oral traditions surviving from this period - AD 1000 to AD 1300 - it is believed that trade with the Arabs led to the rise of the Mapungubwe Kingdom along the Zimbabwe-Botswana border.
Little is known about the people of Mapungubwe. Since the discovery of some of their graves in 1933, which were rich with gold work, we know the Mapungubweans (as these mysterious people are known) were prosperous. This conclusion is substantiated by research done on the remains of from various graves, which found that the Mapungubweans enjoyed a healthy and varied diet.
The Kingdom of Mapungubwe traded with Arab settlements along the West African coast and this activity influenced the people living in and around what is today the Kruger National Park. Evidence of these chiefdoms is found in the stone ruins Thulamela and Matekevhele. These chiefdoms also left evidence of profitable trade, like glass beads, Chinese porcelain, imported cloth, and iron, bronze, copper, gold and ivory artifacts.
Sites like Masorini continued to produce iron tools well into the 19th century.
20 September 2006
The World Health Organization (WHO) has done an about-turn on the use of Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane (DDT) to fight malaria, citing South Africa's successful anti-malaria programme as evidence that controlled indoor spraying of the insecticide is not only safe, but "one of the best tools we have" against the killer disease.
