GAME PARK NEEDS FATHER FIGURES WITH TUSKS.

Byline: Suzanne Daley The New York Times

The call came over the radio as Gus van Dyk was busy exploring the remoter stretches of this 150,000-acre park.

Much as he tried, he could not get his four-wheel-drive vehicle through the brush fast enough. By the time he got to the watering hole, the elephant and the rhinoceros were at peace, each munching in its own style, moving indifferently away from each other.

But the incident would be entered in van Dyk's files at ranger headquarters, where he is the monitoring officer. The elephant with the large notch on his right ear, known as Jace (for just another confused elephant), had been seen by a ranger resting his trunk on the back of a white rhinoceros. Such close contact, even though it was not overtly aggressive, was enough to give him a rap sheet.

In the last year, 20 of the park's white rhinos - an endangered species - have turned up dead. Officials believe at least 10 were killed by elephants who chased the rhinos, knocked them down, knelt on their backs and gored them. Elephants were among the suspects in at least five other cases, but the bodies had been so scavenged or decomposed that it was impossible to be sure.

The mystery is: Which elephants are doing this and why?

Pilanesberg officials believe they are paying the price for their well-meaning but ill-informed early efforts to save some elephants by relocating them.

The elephants in Pilanesberg were all brought here as juveniles, saved from the rifles of gamekeepers who were culling an elephant overpopulation in one of South Africa's other parks. But the transplanted elephants were left without the complex social structure typical of their species. For several years the Pilanesberg elephants had no mother figures; they still have no father figures.

The theory is that some of the young males - now the equivalent of teen-agers - have become, in effect, juvenile delinquents, lacking social restraints on their periodic bouts of musth, a sexual fever in which they become unpredictable and aggressive.

The park has already passed a death sentence on one of these young elephants. In just two months the elephant charged and struck three cars filled with tourists and harassed three different rhinos.

``We took a look at his rap sheet and said `OK, pal, you're out of here,''' van Dyk said. The execution ended badly, however. The mortally wounded elephant lived long enough to kill the professional hunter who had tracked him.

But park officials don't want to just kill off the hoodlums in the elephant population, which currently totals 87. The park is also trying another solution - a sort of elephant Big Brother program. They are bringing in some bulls to see if the older men can bring the younger ones into line.

Typically, older male elephants travel with two askaris - the term is an African one for young male warriors in training. The hope is that the older males will be able to suppress the musth in the younger ones and teach them to behave.

But bull elephants can be 14 feet tall and weigh almost 8 tons. No one has ever tried to move elephants that big before, and engineers at Kruger National Park, the country's largest and oldest park, are only now designing special trucks for the job.

``We can't possibly hope that all our guys will latch on,'' van Dyk said. ``They've been on their own for a while now. It might be too late for some of them. But it's worth the try.''

The idea of bringing in the bulls is actually based in part on the park's earlier success at social engineering. When the young elephants first arrived at Pilanesberg, they behaved strangely for elephants. They scattered across the park, wandering on their own.

Usually young elephants live in herds headed by older females. So the park got two older females. Within weeks the ladies had restored order and the herd was formed. The hope is that now the new bulls will have a paternal effect on the young males.

Marion Garai, who coordinates research on elephants for the Rhino and Elephant Foundation, says that the nonprofit research organization has just begun to collect information on the subject. As the first park to get relocated elephants, Pilanesberg may simply be the first to experience a phenomenon that could occur in many other parks.

``There have certainly been incidents in some of the other parks too,'' Mrs. Garai said. ``We are trying to look at the statistics to see what is going on.''

Pilanesberg, about two hours' drive northwest of Johannesburg, was farmland until 1979 when the local government decided to create a game park.

The area was fenced and more than 6,000 animals - all species once native to the area - were brought in over the next few years.

Between 1979 and 1983, 51 young elephants arrived from Kruger. While elephants are endangered in many parts of Africa, Kruger has had more than it wanted for decades and had been culling hundreds every year.

But by 1979, methods of sedating animals had become sophisticated enough for Kruger officials to try relocating some elephants instead of killing them. Because they were smaller and easier to handle, the park began with saving elephants under the age of 8. Nowadays, it tries to relocate whole herds - females and their young.

Of course the social maladjustment theory is just a theory. There are other ideas too. It could be that the ratio of elephants to rhinos is too high in the park.

``There is no question that there is a lot we don't know,'' van Dyk said. ``Even if we are right on what the problem is, it will be years before we know with any certainty.''