BOTSWANA'S NATIONAL PARKS

Larger than Belgium or Switzerland, the 52800 km2 Central Kalahari Game Reserve, which was set up in 1961, is the one of the largest game reserves in the world. Situated right in the very centre of Botswana, this reserve is characterised by vast open plains, salt pans and ancient riverbeds. Varying from sand dunes with many species of trees and scrubs in the north, to flat bushveld in the central area, the reserve is more heavily wooded in the south, with mopane forests to the south and east. Rainfall is sparse and sporadic and can vary from 170 to 700 millimetres per year.

The people commonly known throughout the world as Bushmen, but more properly referred to as the Basarwa, have been resident in and around the area for probably thousands of years. Originally nomadic hunters and gatherers, the lifestyle of the Basarwa has gradually changed with the times and they now live in settlements, some of which were situated within the southern half of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Government has, however, encouraged these people to move to areas outside the reserve in order that they may be provided with modern facilities, schools, clinics etc and to integrate them into modern society (this policy has also attracted much controversy and criticism).

Other fairly recent residents were Mark and Delia Owens, who spent many years in the Deception Valley area of the park undertaking research mainly on brown hyaena. They set up their camp in the northern section of Deception in a prime "tree island", however tree islands are no longer used for camping in these days of more environmental awareness. The Owens' book, "Cry of the Kalahari" brought the attention of readers to this previously little-visited area and even today many people refer to the Central Kalahari simply as Deception. The name "Deception" comes from a pan in the area of which the dry surface at times appears convincingly full of water until one gets right to the edge.

Game viewing for animals which include giraffe, brown hyaena, warthog, wild dog, cheetah, leopard, lion, blue wildebeest, eland, gemsbok, kudu, red hartebeest and springbok, is best between December and April, when the animals tend to congregate in the pans and valleys.

Khutse Game reserve is a 2590 km2 park which adjoins the southern boundary of the CKGR. It is only 240 km North West of Gaborone but the journey can take up to 5 hours due to the challenge of the road. Once done, the reward is well worth it, with the chance of visitors seeing gemsbok, kudu, steenbok, duikers, ostriches, black-backed jackals and bat-eared foxes. Eland and giraffe are spotted occasionally, while lion, leopard, hyena and wild dogs frequently visit the pans at night but are rarely seen in daylight. This is also a good spot to study the many species of desert birds, insects and reptiles.

For more information or to book a holiday in this region, email gearvadventures@info.bw

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Khutse Game reserve is a 2590 km2 park which adjoins the southern boundary of the CKGR. It is only 240 km North West of Gaborone but the journey can take up to 5 hours due to the challenge of the road. Once done, the reward is well worth it, with the chance of visitors seeing gemsbok, kudu, steenbok, duikers, ostriches, black-backed jackals and bat-eared foxes. Eland and giraffe are spotted occasionally, while lion, leopard, hyena and wild dogs frequently visit the pans at night but are rarely seen in daylight. This is also a good spot to study the many species of desert birds, insects and reptiles.

For more information or to book a holiday in this region, email gearvadventures@info.bw

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Chobe National Park, one of Africa's finest game sanctuaries, covers 10 566 km2. The park is divided into four main focal points comprising the Chobe River front with floodplain and teak forest, the Savuti Marsh in the west about 50 kilometres north of Mababe gate, the Linyanti Swamps in the north-west and the hot dry hinterland in between.

A major feature of Chobe National Park is its elephant population. First of all, the Chobe elephant comprise part of what is probably the largest surviving continuous elephant population. This population covers most of northern Botswana plus north-western Zimbabwe and is currently estimated at around 100 000. This elephant population has built up steadily from a few thousand since the early 1900s and has escaped the massive illegal offtake that has decimated other populations in the 1970s and 1980s. The Chobe elephant are migratory, making seasonal movements of up to 200 kilometres from the Chobe and Linyanti rivers, where they concentrate in the dry season, to the pans in the south-east of the park, to which they disperse in the rains. The Kalahari elephant, including Chobe, has the distinction of being the largest in body size of all living elephants, though the ivory is brittle and you will not see many huge tuskers among these rangy monsters.

Game-viewing is at its best during the dry season, when the majority of natural pans have dried up, and it is wise to avoid the Chobe River front during the heavy rains from January to March. Mosquitoes are prevalent throughout the park and visitors are strongly advised to take an anti-malarial prophylactic before, during and for four weeks after visiting the park, especially during the rainy season.

For more information or to book a holiday in this region, email gearvadventures@info.bw

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Each summer, floods pour down from the highlands of Angola into the Okavango River and flow on through a vast network of narrow waterways, lagoons and broad expanses of the Okavango Delta. The water courses through this huge, 10 000 square kilometres of flood plain and dissipates in the sands of the Kalahari.

Okavango is frequently called a swamp, but mostly its waters are beautifully clear and blue. Most of the Okavango waters are soaked up by the desert, or evaporate. In good years, a fraction may remain to flood Lake Ngami in the south and feed the Boteti River, which runs into Lake Xau in the west and eventually into the huge depression of the Makgadikgadi Pans.

The floods reach their peak in May, covering vast grass flats and making thousands of islands out of tree-covered ridges of land. Thick papyrus grows everywhere and, in the northern parts of the delta, chokes the waterways so that they are impenetrable except by canoes.

This wilderness is uninhabited, except for a few river Bushmen who roam there. They still work iron with primitive bellows, making knives, axes and spears. Their canoes, called mokoros, are hand-hewn from logs.

In the parts of the delta where there is perennial water there are large numbers of crocodiles, hippos and buffaloes. Animals like the sitatunga, lechwe and Chobe bushbuck, which have adapted themselves to the conditions of reed and water, live on the islands.

For more information or to book a holiday in this region, email gearvadventures@info.bw

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Two big fossil lake beds flank the main road from Francistown to Maun - the Makgadikgadi Pan on the southern side and the Nxai Pan in the north.

Makgadikgadi is believed to be the largest salt pan in the world. When dry, which is most of the time, it is 6 500 square kilometres of glaring saline sand, white and absolutely flat. When the waters of the Okavango spill down the Boteti River after good summer rains, the whole area of the pan is flooded to a depth of a few centimetres, providing rich feeding for aquatic birds. Flamingoes and countless pelicans descend on Makgadikgadi.

Great herds of big game - wildebeest, zebra and springbok - water here and herds 10 000 strong can sometimes be seen on the plains besides the pan. In the pan itself, animals stand out in startling fashion on the white salt, their legs shimmering and elongated through mirage caused by heatwaves and glare.

Both pans have been designated national game reserves. At Makgadikgadi the main road run along the edge of the pan, which makes for easy viewing. At Nxai, a road has been built leading from the main road over a high sand ridge.

Nxai is a much smaller depression than Makgadikgadi. Down in the pan small clumps of trees dominate a sea of grass cropped short by the game. There are nearly always giraffe, springbok, bat-eared foxes and hartebeest in the area. In the rainy season migratory herds of gemsbok, wildebeest, buffalo, eland, zebra and elephant swell the numbers and as many as 5 000 head of game have been seen in the pan at one time. Near Nxai is another pan, Kgamakgama, where there are baobab trees and palms.

In recent years both Makgadikgadi and Nxai have begun to be mined for salt, soda ash, sodium sulphate and bromides.

For more information or to book a holiday in this region, email gearvadventures@info.bw

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Many travellers regard the Moremi Wildlife Reserve as the most spectacular and beautiful game park in Southern Africa. It covers more than 1000 square kilometres of grassy flood plains in the north-eastern corner of the Okavango Delta. Apart from savannah, the terrain includes winding waterways with banks of reeds, palm-covered islands, thick forest and lush, lily-covered lagoons where hippos bathe and sport.

With such a wide variety of vegetation comes an incredibly wide spectrum of wild life. Huge herds of impala and tsessebe are always in the area, while in the dry season large herds of buffalo, wildebeest and zebra flock into the park from the Kalahari in search of food and water. The rare sitatunga and lechwe antelope live in the papyrus banks of the waterways. Lions, cheetahs and packs of wild dogs hunt in the open grassland. The reserve is home to an immense number of birds.

Unlike most other game parks, Moremi allows visitors to approach game on foot. The park has been kept as natural as possible by the people who created it, the Tawana tribe. In 1961, worried about the increase in game hunting, the tribe, under the regent, Mrs. Pulane Moremi, widow of Chief Moremi III, established the reserve on their own land. It was the first time an African tribe had founded and administered a game park.

The project has been a profound success, attracting thousands of visitors every year.

For more information or to book a holiday in this region, email gearvadventures@info.bw

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Africa's first formally declared trans-border conservation area - the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park (KTP) on the border of South Africa and Botswana - was officially launched on May 12, 2000 by South African President Thabo Mbeki and Botswana President Festus Mogae. The Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park is located in Kgalagadi District approximately 865km southwest of Gaborone. The combined land area of the KTP is about 38,000 km2 of which 28,400 km2 lies in Botswana and 9,600 km2 in South Africa. Transfrontier parks, border parks or transboundary conservation areas are protected areas that straddle international boundaries. The Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park is such a protected area in the southern Kalahari Desert. The southern Kalahari represents an increasingly rare phenomenon: a large ecosystem relatively free from human interference. The absence of man-made barriers (except to the west and south of the Park) has provided a conservation area large enough to maintain examples of two ecological processes that were once widespread in the savannahs and grasslands of Africa. The large scale migratory movements of wild ungulates; and predation by large mammalian carnivores. These processes are impossible to maintain except in the largest of areas, and their presence in the Kalahari makes the system of special value to conservation.

In addition to this, the Kalahari has a particular aesthetic appeal. The harsh, semi-arid environment has placed adaptive demands on both fauna and flora that are of considerable scientific interest. Few other conservation areas have attracted so many research projects. This research has revealed a widely fluctuating environment, driven by rainfall events, which vary widely in time and space, and produces a system that is difficult to predict and understand without long-term study.

The significance of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park is that it is the first formally declared Transfrontier Park in Africa and it will hopefully serve as a model for conservation in the 21st Century. The Government of Botswana is keen to make the Transfrontier Park a success. The Peace Parks Foundation (an NGO dedicated to promoting transfrontier parks in southern Africa) has played an important role in the development of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park and provides assistance for the creation of other transboundary conservation areas in the region.

For more information or to book a holiday in this region, email gearvadventures@info.bw

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