(Posted 04th November 2024)
Courtesy of African Elephant News and Julia Evans, Daily Maverick
Amid the towering Outeniqua yellowwoods in the Knysna forest walk two men who know the forest better than anyone else. Karel Maswati and Wilfred Oraai have spent more than three decades patrolling these lands, often treading where no other human has ventured.
As South African National Parks (SANParks) field rangers, Karel Maswati and Wilfred Oraai protected the Knysna forest and its creatures from poachers, fires and alien plants. Together, they’ve also been witnesses to the forest’s most elusive inhabitant: the last Knysna elephant, Strangefoot.
“They’re the only two people in the world who know exactly every single elephant trail there is in the Knysna forest and fynbos,” said SANParks ecologist Lizette Moolman.
“And their knowledge, that they’ve built over more than 30 years — not just of Strangefoot, but the elephants that came before her, and the ecology of the forest — is phenomenal.”
Keepers of the Elephant’s Trails
Maswati and Oraai’s bond with Strangefoot is built on years of careful observation and respect for the elephant’s solitary existence. For most people, Strangefoot is the “elusive Knysna elephant”, who has managed to remain unseen by most. It’s taken others months of camping out in the forest to catch a glimpse of her.
But for Maswati, who has worked in the forest for 34 years and is due to retire in six months, finding her is second nature. He said that if he wanted to find her today, it wouldn’t be hard.
“When I see her, it feels special,” he said, acknowledging that she’s the last remaining native Knysna elephant. “I don’t think there’s going to be any more.”
Oraai, who retired six months ago, began working in the forest in 1988 when he was 29.
He recalls a poignant encounter with Strangefoot in 2011 when he was walking from Diepwalle to Knysna on the R339 on a drizzly day. He saw four elephant footprints in the road and then an elephant walked in front of him past some cars.
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“It was her … Strangefoot. That evening, it was a special moment. But all of a sudden, something tells me — no you have to communicate with her, tell her you are Wilfred. And then she comes with her trunk, smells and turns back into the forest.”
Oraai said Strangefoot knows Maswati and himself and that she is calm when they track her, but doesn’t like it when they bring other people with them. He describes his connection with Strangefoot and the animals in the forest as almost spiritual.
Despite her isolation, Strangefoot has survived for years. “She’s clever, she’s smart,” explains Oraai. “An elephant has knowledge that we as humans don’t have.”
The Importance of Local Knowledge
Though Strangefoot’s movements are now mostly tracked by camera traps, the years of fieldwork by Oraai and Maswati were crucial to enabling scientific research.
SANParks’ Moolman began working with Maswati and Oraai more than 10 years ago when she began researching how many native Knysna elephants remained in the Diepwalle section of the Garden Route National Park.
When SANParks set up more than 80 camera traps across 180km² of forest between Knysna and George, only one elephant consistently appeared — Strangefoot. The success of the study depended heavily on the data collected by Oraai and Maswati over decades.
“Without Karel and Wilfred, my research would have been much harder and taken far longer,” she said.
“That was right at the start,” said Moolman, “and that’s when I realised just how phenomenal these guys are.”
Read more: One elephant remains in Knysna forest — should we reintroduce a herd or leave her be?
Klaas Havenga, a senior ranger in the Knysna section of the Garden Route National Park, who has worked with the pair since 1996, echoed these sentiments.
“If it was not for their knowledge of the whereabouts of the elephant, nobody would have known where to put the trap cameras,” he said.
“Sometimes the elephant would disappear for weeks, leaving no traces. But Karel and Wilfred would head out, and by the end of the day, we’d know exactly where she was.”
Moolman recalled working with them in the field trying to find Strangefoot’s fresh dung for hormone studies.
“Especially during those days, I would come out of the field totally amazed,” she said.
“We would walk down a forest road, and then suddenly they would go off-road and say, ‘Oh, the elephant disappeared into this area.’
“And I would be like, ‘How do you know that?’ And then a few metres on you, you can see the signs not visible from the larger roads. So that’s just absolutely phenomenal. So over the years … yoh, I’ve just got so much respect for them and what they do and how much they know.”
Moolman emphasised the critical role that local knowledge plays in studies like this. “That native, local understanding is essential when setting up camera trap studies. Without it, it’s like taking a shot in the dark.”
Lizette Moolman has been working with field ranger Karel Maswati since 2007.
Guardians of the Forest
Maswati and Oraai’s days are filled with routine tasks that are vital to preserving the forest.
They monitor the health of the ecosystem, reporting when the Outeniqua trees are full of seed, sightings of rare plants, law enforcement incidents and giving information to tourists.
“They are our eyes and ears,” said Havenga, “Without their presence in the field we would not be aware of what is happening. I recall many days smelling Deep Heat … to cope with the aching leg muscles after tracking the elephant for days on end no matter what the weather conditions were at the time.”
Beyond their professional expertise, Maswati and Oraai are known for their humility and kindness.
Moolman lived next door to Maswati for almost 10 years in a SANParks house on the edge of the forest, where Maswati still lives.
“Our field days out used to be full of laughter, jokes and just chatting,” she recalled. “And they would tell me stories. They really are people with a lot of knowledge and a lot to say — even though they don’t always say it.”
Both men have dedicated their lives to preserving this wilderness.
“I preserve this place for the future generations that will come after me and I hope they will do the same, as Wilfred and I have done to preserve nature like this, for their future generations,” said Maswati.
“When it comes to Karel and Wilfred, I don’t feel that I have the words,” said Moolman. “They are just absolutely amazing — they’ve become so much a part of the story.”
