Tag archives for Botswana
Posted by While traveling with Cheetah Conservation Botswana, I had the rare experience to meet the Nai Nai San Bushmen of the Central Kalahari. The name Nai Nai translates directly as “people of the bush” thus they consider themselves to be the true bushmen. This small family group is one of many who travel through the area…
Posted by In September 2010, we departed from Seronga Village in two “mokoros” or dug-out canoes on an adventure of a lifetime…. No one we knew had ever done this before and the raw energy of that “first-time” was inspirational. We filmed what we could and took some amazing photographs, but remained focussed on the research and…
The President of Botswana, Lieutenant General Ian Khama, announced recently at a public meeting in Maun, the gateway to the Okavango Delta, that no further hunting licenses would be issued from 2013, and that all hunting in Botswana would be impossible by 2014. This new ban extends to all ‘citizen hunting’ and covers all species, including…
Most people are surprised and alarmed when they are told that the Okavango Delta is not a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This is about to change with nomination scheduled for February next year and declaration in 2014. The word, “Okavango”, like “Amazon” and “Congo”, evokes the powerful sense of place in the “wilderness” and imagines an untamed place characterized…
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If it looks like a male lion and is perceived as a male lion—well, sometimes it isn’t. That’s the case of Africa’s unusual maned lionesses, which sport a male’s luxurious locks and may even fool competitors.
Until next year then… During those last few days on the mokoros you can feel every kilometer travelled away from the wilderness in the center of the Okavango Delta that you have just visited. As this “true wilderness” got further and further away we began to fear that we would forget what it felt like…
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Rather than the open plains of the Serengeti, the habitat for this study has fairly dense vegetation, making direct observation of cheetah behavior nearly impossible. That’s where Crittercam comes in.
I asked Cheetah Conservation Botswana’s researcher, Jane Horgan, why they needed to capture and collar a female cheetah. “We wanted home range and movement data to look at the movements of cheetahs through the Ghanzi farmlands. Information about how far they move in a day, how large their home ranges are, how long they stay…
My first day in the field with Cheetah Conservation Botswana staff, I met Keith. Manager of the Ko Mogotlhong Game Farm, he drove up with his work crew to check out our activities. Since CCB has many camera traps on the farm in addition to the cage trap, I meet Keith a number of times. …
The latest from cheetah country comes to you in 3 parts: Part I: Ghanzi District, Botswana. Late October, 2011 – Cheetah Conservation Botswana It is Sunday at last, time to rest. A lazy feeling takes hold of cheetah camp, even Murphy is pretty low key and Cat…
Watching a pair of fishing owls watching him was all in another day’s work for National Geographic Grantee Steve Boyes, on Vundumtiki Island, deep in Botswana’s Okavango wetlands wilderness. The Okavango Nest Box Project has found that the artificial shelters have become homes to a variety of birds and other animals, including bushbabies (Lesser galagos), woodland dormice, squirrels … and bees.
“We all sat in wonder in the darkness, trying not to talk and feeling like kings of the world, flying among the stars of the Kalahari big sky,” writes National Geographic Grantee Steve Boyes, in this latest dispatch from the Okavango wilderness in Botswana. Boyes and colleagues are checking nest boxes and doing transects on Vundumtiki Island, deep in one of the world’s most remote wetlands.
In the second dispatch from Botswana’s Okavango wilderness, National Geographic Grantee Steve Boyes writes that traveling through the vast wetlands by traditional mokoro (dug-out canoe) across channels, lagoons and floodplains is like “walking on water.”
Join National Geographic Scientist Steve Boyes on an expedition into the heart of Botswana’s Okavango wilderness, on a mission to an island in the wetlands seldom visited by humans, where the “Bush Boyes” are researching cavity-nesting bird communities.
These people work hard out here; the conservationists, the farmers, everyone. The hot days of October dictate an early rise to reach the far-flung locations that entail research, data gathering and community outreach. I’m in the central Kalahari region, just outside the town of Ghanzi in Botswana. It’s hot, like… Africa hot… as the cliché…
This is the first installment from reporting on cheetah conservation and human/predator co-existence from Southern Africa.
Five African Nations Sign Up for Conservation Zone the Size of California
Posted by Leon Marshall of Environmental Journalist, News Watch South African Contributor on August 29, 2011 Five southern African countries have signed into place the region’s biggest and most ambitious transfrontier conservation project yet. It covers a sparsely populated region of 444,000 square kilometers (171,429 square miles; slightly larger than California) that comprises some of the most spectacular scenery on the continent.
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For 20 years, field scientists participating in Conservation International’s Rapid Assessment Program (RAP) have been exploring some of the world’s most abundant, mysterious and threatened tropical ecosystems; to date, they’ve discovered more than 1,300 species new to science.
Currently playing in cinemas across the United States is the latest National Geographic wildlife feature film, The Last Lions. It’s a poignant story about the struggle of a lioness and her cubs in one of the last remnants of wilderness available to Africa’s legendary big cats. Chased from her territory by a rival pride of…
Photo Camp: The Video
Posted by Ford Cochran on August 24, 2009 Director Kirsten Elstner and others describe National Geographic Photo Camp, a global program sponsored by the Geographic’s Education Foundation through which Nat Geo photographers train students to document their communities and local environments with photography. Recent Photo Camp settings include Botswana’s Okavango Delta … … Jhadol in northwestern India … … Vinalhaven and North Haven…
A River Runs Through It
Posted by Ford Cochran on August 18, 2009 Yesterday afternoon at around 2:30, the headwaters of the Okavango met up with the river flow down the Selinda, joining up the Selinda Spillway for the first time in 30 years! It is, in our small part of the world and for our concession, a momentous occasion. The spillway runs right through our concession from…
Engaging Local Communities in Conservation
Posted by Ford Cochran on June 15, 2009 More highlights from the 2009 National Geographic Explorers Symposium: Filmmakers and National Geographic Explorers-in-Residence Dereck and Beverly Joubert spoke of a partnership with the Maasai in southeastern Kenya, where fewer than 200 lions survive, that has reduced lion deaths from 40 a year to one in the last 18 months, of the shooting of Botswana‘s…
