An elephant and a marula tree are not opponents. They are both architects of the same bushveld.
Elephants open dense vegetation, disperse seeds and reshape the landscape. Large trees provide shade, enrich the soil and create nesting places for birds. But when elephant activity becomes concentrated in one area, mature trees can be lost faster than they can recover or be replaced.
At Thornybush Nature Reserve, the challenge is to protect important mature trees while allowing elephants to continue playing their natural role in shaping the landscape.
The reserve works with Elephants Alive to monitor elephant impact and test targeted ways of protecting selected marula, knobthorn and vulture nesting trees.
Why Elephants and Trees Both Matter
Elephants are ecosystem engineers. As they feed, push over trees and move through dense vegetation, they continually change the structure of the bushveld.
These changes can benefit other species and help maintain a varied landscape. But concentrated elephant activity can also place pressure on mature trees through bark stripping, broken branches, uprooting and snapped trunks.
And large trees matter.
Their canopies create cooler spaces beneath them. Their roots draw nutrients from deep in the soil. Their branches provide nesting and roosting places, while their trunks, shade and fallen leaves support countless ecological relationships.
The aim is therefore not to stop elephants from shaping the landscape. It is to understand where a carefully targeted intervention can protect a particularly important tree or nesting site.
What Does Elephants Alive do at Thornybush?
Elephants Alive provides specialist research and practical guidance to help Thornybush Nature Reserve understand elephant behaviour and reduce severe impact on selected trees.
The work includes identifying and monitoring vulnerable trees, mapping vulture nesting sites and testing methods such as beehives, wire mesh and rock barriers.
The objective is not to remove elephants or restrict their natural behaviour. It is to retain enough important mature trees to support the wider ecosystem while elephants continue moving through the connected Greater Kruger landscape.
Elephants Alive has studied elephants and their habitats across southern Africa for more than 25 years. Its research includes an identification database of more than 2,000 elephants, GPS tracking of approximately 200 animals and more than two million location records.
The organisation has also monitored more than 3,000 individual trees since 2004.
This long-term research gives reserve managers something invaluable: the ability to make decisions based on measured outcomes rather than short-term impressions.
At Thornybush, that expertise is applied to a specific habitat challenge — protecting selected mature trees without disrupting the natural role elephants play.
Protecting Vulture Nesting Trees
Large trees are more than landmarks. They are ecological infrastructure.
Lose a mature tree and the landscape may also lose a nesting site that took decades to develop.
At the start of the Thornybush initiative, 29 vulture nests were identified and GPS-mapped across the reserve. This enabled the habitat team to locate nesting trees and prioritise those requiring additional protection.
The project also focuses on large marula and knobthorn trees, both important components of the local bushveld and particularly vulnerable to heavy elephant use.
Protecting one tree can therefore do far more than preserve its trunk and canopy. It can retain shade, shelter, food and nesting habitat for many other species.
Three Ways to Protect a Tree
Beehives
Elephants are highly sensitive to bees, particularly around their eyes, ears and trunks.
Hanging active beehives in selected trees can discourage elephants from getting close enough to push over the tree or strip its bark.
There is another benefit too. Bees pollinate surrounding vegetation and can produce honey, connecting tree protection with a productive natural system.
Research involving Elephants Alive found that beehives were the most effective of four tested tree protection methods. Over five years, mortality among protected trees was 10%, compared with 34% among unprotected control trees.
Beehives do, however, require active management. Colonies must be monitored and may need supplementary feeding during dry periods when pollen is scarce.
Wire mesh
Wire mesh is wrapped around the main stem of a tree to reduce bark stripping.
Removing large sections of bark can leave a tree vulnerable to moisture loss, fire and insect damage. The mesh makes the trunk more difficult for an elephant to grip and peel while allowing the tree to continue growing.
It must, however, be inspected and loosened as the trunk expands.
Research shows that wire protection can be effective against bark stripping, although it cannot prevent heavier impacts such as uprooting or the snapping of a main stem.
Rock barriers
Rocks can be packed around a tree to make it more difficult for an elephant to stand close enough to push against the trunk.
This method is particularly useful where uprooting is the main concern.
At Thornybush, it can also be more resource intensive, as suitable rocks may need to be transported to priority sites.
Each method addresses a different type of elephant impact. Ongoing monitoring helps determine which intervention is most appropriate and whether it remains effective over time.
Where GPS Research Fits Into the Story
GPS technology plays an important role in Elephants Alive’s wider regional research.
Collars record the movements of selected elephants across reserve and national boundaries, helping researchers understand where elephants find water, which routes connect protected areas and where their movements bring them into contact with farms, settlements or other risks.
This information can help conservationists plan wildlife corridors and develop better responses to human-elephant conflict.
At Thornybush, GPS has also been used to map vulture nesting sites so that important trees can be located, monitored and considered for protection.
The partnership brings together these different levels of conservation: broader regional research alongside practical, targeted habitat management within the reserve.
Is There Such a Thing as too Many Elephants?
It is an understandable question, but there is no simple answer.
The ecological impact of elephants depends on the size and connectivity of a landscape, water distribution, vegetation and how animals move through the area.
African savannah elephants are classified as Endangered, yet individual landscapes can still experience concentrated elephant activity. Both can be true.
At Thornybush, the focus is not on treating elephants as a problem. It is on understanding their ecological impact and responding where specific intervention can protect trees that are especially important to the wider ecosystem.
This is what science-based conservation looks like in practice: not choosing elephants over trees, or trees over elephants, but understanding what both need from the same landscape.
Conservation Across the Reserve
A protected tree may not create the drama of an elephant sighting, and its significance can take longer to see.
It is measured in the nest that remains secure, the shade still cast decades later and the ecological relationships that continue beneath its canopy.
At Thornybush, this work is undertaken by the Nature Reserve, with specialist research and monitoring support from Elephants Alive. Thornybush Lodges operates within the reserve, contributes funding towards conservation work and cooperates with reserve management.
Together, this model connects tourism, research and practical habitat management while recognising the distinct roles each plays in protecting the bushveld for the future.
