Kruger National Park () is a national park in South Africa covering an area of in the provinces of Limpopo and Mpumalanga in the country's northeast. It extends from north to south and from east to west. The administrative headquarters are in Skukuza. Areas of the park were first protected by the government of the South African Republic in 1898, and it became South Africa's first national park in 1926. It is part of Kruger to Canyons Biosphere, an area designated as a biosphere reserve. It is within the South Africa Standard Time Zone (GMT+2).
The founder of Kruger National Park is considered to be President Paul Kruger. It is a major tourist attraction which in 2024 drew close to 2 million visitors.
History
Conservation Pre-Game Reserve (1867–1898) A Game Commission was established in 1891 with J.M. Malan of Rustenburg as chairman, which resulted in the establishment of the game law of 1891.Game Law (Law Number 6) 1891 - South African Republic As early as 1867 individual farmers in the South African Republic started publishing notices in the Staatscourant which prohibited hunting as a measure to preserve game on their private land. In this manner a total 200 owners protected game on some 300 farms between 1867 and 1881.
One of these farmers was pioneer Alexander Marsh Robertson who owned two adjacent farms, Rolfontein and Elandsberg, extending over 7600 morgen () in the Wakkerstroom district. Robertson was the first farmer to fence part of his property to create a game camp in the eastern Transvaal, some 500 morgen () using leadwood and barbed wire. The creation of the game camp however was serendipity. Robertson initially erected the fence to restrain his horses, but the fence also provided the added benefit of protecting the ground game. Game in this camp increased significantly due to the protection offered by the fence.
President Paul Kruger regularly toured the rural areas to visit his people. He heard about the success of Robertson's "game camp" and wrote to Albertus Stoop, his son Tjaart's future father-in-law, himself a keen conservationist and neighbour of Robertson, to arrange a visit to Rolfontein so that he could see the experiment first hand and stay the night. Kruger was very impressed with Robertson's unexpected success and continued to show great interest in the Wakkerstroom farmer's efforts to preserve game over the next few years. He visited Rolfontein again in 1892, and it was at this visit, at a great braai held in his honour that he spoke to the importance of Rolfontein in protecting smaller game and proceeded to lay out, for the first time in a public forum, his plan to establish the first Game Reserve in Africa along the Sabi River to preserve the big game that needed a much larger protected habitat to thrive.
Sabi Game Reserve (1898–1926) Sabi Game Reserve was initially created to control hunting and to protect the diminishing number of animals in the area. The reserve was located in the southern one-third of the modern park. James Stevenson-Hamilton became the first warden of the reserve in 1902. Singwitsi Reserve, named after the Shingwedzi River and now in northern Kruger National Park, was proclaimed in 1903. During the following decades all the native tribes were removed from the reserve and during the 1960s the last were removed at Makuleke in the Pafuri triangle.
In 1918 a commission was established to review the Sabi Reserve. The first secretary of the commission was J. A. de Ridder, a civil servant. Counterintuitively, the commission actually recommended reducing the size of the park in order to allow greater commercial exploitation of the land.
In 1923, the Minister for Lands, Deneys Reitz, led a survey expedition around the reserve and devised a scheme whereby the government would exchange state land outside the reserve with that of the local private landowners in order to establish a true national park. During the same year, the first large groups of tourists started visiting the Sabi Game Reserve, but only as part of the South African Railways' popular "Round in Nine" tours. The tourist trains travelled the Selati railway line between Komatipoort on the Mozambican border and Tzaneen in the then northern Transvaal.
Following a change of government in 1924, Reitz's scheme was implemented by the new Lands Minister, Piet Grobler. In May 1926, Grobler introduced a National Parks Bill to parliament, which passed on 11 June 1926, finally establishing the modern Kruger National Park.
The name Kruger was officially proposed by Judge J.A.J de Villiers at a meeting of the National Monuments Commission and especially appealed to Grobler himself as a great-grandnephew of Paul Kruger. Behind the scenes it had been championed by English-speaking naturalists in order to win Afrikaner support for the Park.
Kruger National Park
By the passage of the National Parks Act of 1926, Sabi Game Reserve, the adjacent Shingwedzi Game Reserve, and farms were combined to create Kruger National Park. In line with the scheme developed by Reitz, private landowners in total exchanged a total of of land in the reserve for of government land on the outside, as well financial restitution, which totalled £40,000.
The previous Sabi Reserve Warden, James Stevenson-Hamilton, became Warden of the new park. A Board of Trustees was appointed to run the park, chaired by Senator W. J.C. Brebner (chairman), and including a range of politicians, naturalists and philanthropists: Deneys Reitz, Oswald Pirow, H.B. Papenfus, R. A. Hockly, Sir Abe Bailey, W.A. Campbell, Alwin Karl Haagner, Gustav Preller, and A.E. Charter, who served as secretary.
In 1928 the head of the South African Air Force, Sir Pierre van Ryneveld, personally led an airborne expedition by three Board of Trustees members to investigate the effect of low-flying airplanes on game. The Board members included Deneys Reitz, who used the data from this trip to frame regulations on flying over the Park.
Warden James Stevenson-Hamilton retired on 30 April 1946, after 44 years of service. He was replaced by Colonel J. A. B. Sandenbergh of the South African Air Force. In 1959, work commenced to completely fence the park's boundaries. Work started on the southern boundary along the Crocodile River and in 1960 the western and northern boundaries were fenced, followed by the eastern boundary with Mozambique. The purpose of the fence was to curb the spread of diseases, facilitate border patrolling and inhibit the movement of poachers.
The Makuleke area in the northern part of the park was forcibly taken from the Makuleke people by the government in 1969 and about 1500 of them were relocated to land to the south so that their original tribal areas could be integrated into the greater Kruger National Park.
In 1996, the Makuleke tribe submitted a land claim for , namely the Pafuri or Makuleke region in the northernmost part of the park. The land was given back to the Makuleke people, however, they chose not to resettle on the land but to engage with the private sector to invest in tourism. This resulted in the building of several game lodges from which they earn royalties.
In the late 1990s, the fences between the Kruger Park and Klaserie Game Reserve, Olifants Game Reserve, and Balule Nature Reserve were dropped and incorporated into the Greater Kruger Park with added to the Reserve. In 2002, Kruger National Park, Gonarezhou National Park in Zimbabwe, and Limpopo National Park in Mozambique were incorporated into a peace park, the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park.
Location and geography
The park lies in the northeast of South Africa, in the eastern or lowveld region of Limpopo and Mpumalanga provinces. Three South African towns, namely Phalaborwa, Malelane and Komatipoort border the park, and due to their proximity to entry gates, often accommodate day visitors. In addition various lodges and conservation villages such as Shawu's Hills, Marloth Park, Mjejane, Ngwenya, Leopard Creek, Leopard Sands and Elephant Point also overlook the southern portion of the park.
It is one of the largest national parks in the world, with an area of . The park is approximately long, and has an average width of . At its widest point, the park is wide from east to west.
To the north and south of the park, four eastward flowing rivers, the Limpopo, Luvubu, Sabie and Crocodile Rivers respectively, act as natural boundaries. Additionally the Olifants and Letaba Rivers traverse the park from west to east. The Olifants, besides forming the provincial boundary, essentially bisects the park and presents a distinct dividing line between two major ecological and vegetation zones. To the east, the Lebombo Mountains separate it from Mozambique. Some distant, the western boundary runs broadly parallel with this range. The park varies in altitude between in the east and in the south-west near Berg-en-Dal, where a granite inselberg, Khandzalive, forms the highest point in the park.
The climate of the Kruger National Park and lowveld is subtropical/tropical, specifically a hot semi-arid climate (Köppen BSh). Summer days are humid and hot. The rainy season is from September until May. The Kruger National Park website lists September and October as the driest periods, culminating at the beginning of the rainy season late in October. Because the park spans from north to south, climate can vary throughout the park. Skukuza in the southern part of the park is about cooler throughout the year than Pafuri in the north, with significantly more rainfall. The Pafuri floodplain, at less than 300mm per annum, receives the lowest precipitation in the park, and the Pretoriuskop sourveld, at around 700mm per annum, the highest.
Biodiversity
Vegetation Plant life consists of four main areas, which correspond roughly to the four quadrants of the park. The main veld types are determined by the rainfall gradient (400 to 750 mm per annum) and geological substrates.
Shrub mopane veld Shrub mopane covers almost the entire northeastern part of the park.
Red bush-willow and mopane veld This area lies in the park's western half, north of the Olifants River. The two most prominent species here are the red bush-willow (Combretum apiculatum) and the mopane tree (Colophospermum mopane).
Thorn trees and red bush-willow veld This area lies between the western boundary and roughly the centre of the park south of the Olifants River. Combretums, such as the red bush-willow (Combretum apiculatum), and Acacia species predominate while there are a great number of marula trees (Sclerocarya afra). The Acacias are dominant along the rivers and streams, the very dense Nwatimhiri bush along the Sabie River between Skukuza and Lower Sabie being a very good example.
Knob-thorn and marula veld South of the Olifants River in the park's eastern half, this area provides the most important grazing land. Species such as red grass (Themeda triandra) and buffalo grass (Megathyrsus maximus) predominate while the knob-thorn (Senegalia nigrescens), leadwood (Combretum imberbe) and marula (Sclerocarya afra) are the main tree species.
Local vegetation communities Several smaller areas in the park carry distinctive vegetation. The Pretoriuskop sourveld and Malelane mountain bushveld receive relatively high rainfall. Here sickle bush and silver cluster-leaf (Terminalia sericea) are prominent. The sandveld communities northeast of Punda Maria are equally distinctive, with a wide variety of unique plant species. The bush-clad hills along the Levuvhu River also shelter an interesting floral diversity and some near-endemic species.
Mammals
All the big five game animals are found at Kruger National Park, which has more species of large mammals than any other African game reserve (at 147 species). There are webcams set up to observe the wildlife.