Expansion is also part of the park's six-year World Bank-funded expansion drive and is capitalising on the park's chief five different biomes (major vegetation zones).

The Addo Elephant National Park took a giant step forward yesterday, lowering the southern fence between the old and new sections of the park and opening the way for its burgeoning jumbo herd to return to their ancestral home.

Signalling Addo's status as "a flagship 21st-century park", the move will also result in multiple conservation and socio-economic benefits, said speakers at yesterday's ceremony in the park. The ceremony was led by SANParks executive manager Paul Daphne and Addo manager Norman Johnson, who used an industrial-strength pair of bolt cutters to snap the supporting strands of a section of the 4km fence, sending it crashing to the ground amid cheers from guests.

Made with railway cables from the old PE tramline, the "Armstrong fence" (named after designer and early park manager Graham Armstrong) did its job well, but its removal marked a historic moment, Daphne said.

"Addo has expanded to about 180,000ha but the park core, where the elephants presently are, is just over 120,00ha, north of the Addo Heights road. With the lowering of the fence today we have expanded this core to include the just under 120,00ha south of the road.

"For the first time in 79 years, the Addo elephants can now return to their ancestral home. The name of this park's community partnership is Mayibuye Ndlovu (‘let the elephant return', in Xhosa) and this really is what we are doing here."

The 550 elephants flourishing in the park today are all offspring of the 11 jumbos that took refuge in the impenetrable Olifantsplaat thicket near Colchester from the government-endorsed hunts of the 1920s, launched to protect the fledgling orange farming industry.

When the park was proclaimed in 1931, this nuclear herd was lured - using the oranges which bewitched them - into its protective boundaries, into what became the core elephant area.

Daphne said the occasion yesterday was also a national conservation benchmark for South Africa.

"The reason is that the Addo park itself is a flagship in terms of the way it has married the imperatives of biodiversity conservation, tourism, commercial development and stakeholder engagement. This event today is a continuation of that process."

Yesterday's event was also part of the park's six-year World Bank-funded expansion drive, he said. The expansion process is aimed at capitalising on the park's chief bounty of five different biomes (major vegetation zones).

Tourism specialist Peter Myles said the park was an established icon in the Eastern Cape, a catalyst for growth which bucked the trend even in tough times.