Gonarezhou takes its name from the place of many elephants, and the park lives up to it. Estimates put the population at 10,000 to 11,000 animals — a figure that represents one of the largest concentrations in Zimbabwe and one of the most significant elephant populations in all of southern Africa. During the dry season, when the Runde and Save rivers are the main water sources, herds converge on the riverbanks in numbers that can be genuinely overwhelming. Fifty animals at a waterhole is unremarkable; a hundred is not unusual.
What distinguishes Gonarezhou's elephants from those in more heavily visited parks is their wariness. They have not been habituated by decades of tourist vehicles, and they may react unpredictably to cars — mock-charging, retreating rapidly, or simply melting into the mopane in a way that an animal of that size shouldn't be able to. This makes game drives genuinely unpredictable and, for experienced safari travellers, all the more compelling. The protocol in Gonarezhou is to give elephants more space than you might elsewhere and to be aware of wind direction when approaching on foot.
The park also has an important nyala population — a rare antelope at the northern edge of its range — alongside lion, leopard, wild dog, cheetah, buffalo, and black rhino (in very small numbers, carefully monitored). The conservation partnership between ZimParks and the Frankfurt Zoological Society's Gonarezhou Conservation Trust has stabilised and grown the wildlife populations significantly since 2007.