Effects of Elephants and Goats on the Kaffrarian Succulent Thicket of the Eastern Cape, South Africa

Kaffrarian succulent thicket is a dense, semi-succulent, thorny vegetation which is rapidly being eliminated under current pastoral systems. To understand why this occurs, the effect of defoliation by wild herbivores (mostly elephant) was compared with that of domestic ungulates (mostly goats) from surveys inside and outside the Addo Elephant National Park. 2. Both elephants and goats reduced canopy cover and increased shrub density in relation to control areas. Goats reduced the number of dominant shrub species per quadrat. 3. Replacing elephants with goats resulted in a fundamental change in the shrub community to one dominated by small, unpalatable shrubs with a few scattered umbrella-shaped trees