Philip Jacobus Pretorius

Major Philip Jacobus ("Jan") Pretorius (born February 18, 1877 , † November 24, 1945 in Pretoria ) was a South African elephant hunter and adventurer. He began his career in the 1890s as an " ivory hunter" hunting elephants.

During the First World War , Pretorius was responsible for tracking down and sinking the German warship SMS Königsberg .

In 1919 he received a far-reaching order from the Cape Government to exterminate the wild elephants in order to avoid the devastation of newly created fields in the Addo district. With the expansion of the agriculturally used area, the elephant's habitat became smaller and smaller, so that the animals inevitably had to move to the farmland.

Within a few years, Pretorius wiped out almost all of the elephants in the area. Finally, the Mentone Reserve, which was to become Addo Elephant National Park on June 13, 1931 , was established to protect the remaining animals.

literature

• Jungle Man. The Autobiography of Major PJ Pretorius. (First published 1948) Lightning Source Inc, 2000, ISBN 1570901171
• Dictionary of South African Biography. 5 volumes, Human Sciences Research Council, Pretoria 1968–1987