The Greater Addo Elephant Natioanal Park is the result of a vision to expand
the Addo Elephant Park, gazetted in 1931 to protect a handful of indigenous
elephants, into South Africa's third largest wildlife park (after Kruger and the
Kalagadi transfrontier park). This proposal originated in 1997 from
the Terrestrial Ecology Research Unit at the University of Port Elizabeth, and
has been exectued with assistance form the Global Environmental Facility (GEF).
As of December 2004 the park had expanded to over 148 000 hectares aiming
towards a goal of 240,000 hectares with an additional 120,000 hectares for a
marine protected area.
The expanded park is rich in biodiversity, conserving five of South Africa's
seven biomes - namely subtropical thicket, fynbos, grassland, forest and Nama
karoo. It is also the world's first Big Seven reserve, home to the traditional
Big Five plus the Southern Right whale and Great White shark.
This marine protected area, including the Bird and St. Croix island groups, is
an important breeding habitat for gannets and penguins, not to mention a large
variety of other marine life. Bird Island is home the world's largest breeding
colony of gannets and the second largest breeding colony
of African penguins.
