The African Buffalo Distribution in Kruger National Park
Each small
black dot represents a single African Buffalo sighting. It does not take into
account how many African Buffalos were seen a that point in time only that a
sighting was made. There a few sites more impressive than to see the wild
animals charging across the veld (an Afrikaans word commonly used for savannah
or plains) or through what appears to be impenetrable bush thickets.
In my last 2 visits to the Kruger I have seen more Buffalo than ever before. I have seen at least 6 large herds and numerous individual or small groups of Buffalo.
This Kruger National Park website was
developed by my father, Tony Roocroft, to map all the roads in
this wonderful wildlife heritage site. He completed the project and
at the time of writing this is unfortunately not very well. His last
wish was for all the information he gathered and put together over
years of hard work was to be published... And this has become a
reality, together with lots of help from Africa On Paper publishers
the book is now available for sale, as you will see on the left. It is
unlike any other Kruger National Park and shares everything you can
imagine about the park... Please have a look at it, its great, just
click the picture to learn more about the book.
The coloured dots are explained below and represent locations of the Kruger Park where visitors can stay and/or camp on specially arranged Game Trails.
Key to coloured dots ... Rest Camps, Trails and Camp Areas
Refer to
the table below to see more detail on the actual numbers sighted (African
Buffalo normally move in herds). Where there are dense clusters of African
Buffalo sighting dots then this suggests this region would be a prime area for
spotting the African Buffalo. The Pretoriuskop area in the south west of the
park, for example, stands out as prime Rhino territory along with the far north
west. The
buffalo can be seen over most of the Kruger as the map plainly
indicates. Take note of the occasional sighting in Mozambique ... the
Transfrontier Park has allowed some animals to migrate.
Basis: March 2005 to Feb 2006 Kruger Park Ranger observations of Buffalo in all KNP sections using GPS incorporated into hand help PDA systems based upon Cybertracker technology.
Source of data: Kruger National Park monthly GIS data published in pdf format on their website. Map created by Tony Roocroft using this data source after extraction and reformatting.
In addition to plotting the extensive data on the map shown I also
analysed month by month sighting numbers and have shown these Buffalo
numbers in the table below ... for all other members of the
"Big 5" click
the link. Take Note: these numbers do not reflect numbers in the total
numbers in the Kruger National park (KNP). They only show the number
seen and counted by rangers. It is almost certain for example that the
same animal was seen on more than 1 occasion. Use the information to get
a feel for the relative numbers of the Big 5. On another page I have
commented on the actual census figures for the Kruger.
The Kruger is split up into 22 sections and the data is the sum of all observations in all sections.
| Species | African Buffalo |
|---|---|
| Mar | 19,771 |
| Apr | 28,136 |
| May | 36,875 |
| Jun | 35,431 |
| Jul | 36,517 |
| Aug | 23,140 |
| Sep | 40,150 |
| Oct | 53,147 |
| Nov | 39,994 |
| Dec | 26,651 |
| Jan | 13,590 |
| Feb | 13,590 |
| Total | 370,019 |