CHOBE NATIONAL PARK
Chobe National Park, in northern Botswana,
has one of the largest concentrations of game
in Africa. By size, it is the third largest park in
the country, after the Central Kalahari Game
Reserve and the Gemsbok National Park,
and is the most biologically diverse. It is also
Botswana’s first national park.
The original inhabitants of this area were
the San bushmen (also known as the Basarwa
people in Botswana). They were nomadic
hunter-gatherers who were constantly moving
from place to place to find food sources, namely
fruits, water and wild animals. Nowadays one
can find San paintings inside rocky hills of the
park.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the
region that would become Botswana was
divided into different land tenure systems. At
that time, a major part of the park’s area was
classified as crown land. The idea of a national
park to protect the varied wildlife found here
as well as promote tourism first appeared in
1931. The following year, 24,000 km2 around
Chobe district were officially declared nonhunting area; this area was expanded to
31,600 km2 two years later.
In 1943, heavy tsetse infestations occurred
throughout the region, delaying the creation of
the national park. By 1953, the project received
governmental attention again: 21,000 km2
were suggested to become a game reserve.
The Chobe Game Reserve was officially
created in 1960, though smaller than initially
desired. In 1967, the reserve was declared a
national park.
At that time there were several industrial
settlements in the region, especially at
Serondela, where the timber industry
proliferated. These settlements were gradually
moved out of the park, and it was not until 1975
that the whole protected area was exempt from
human activity. Nowadays traces of the prior
timber industry are still visible at Serondela.
The park is widely known for its spectacular
elephant population: It contains an estimated
50,000 elephants, perhaps the highest
elephant concentration of Africa, and part
of the largest continuous surviving elephant
population. The elephant population seems to
have solidly built up since 1990, from a few
thousand.
Elephants living here are Kalahari elephants,
the largest in size of all known elephant
populations. They are characterized by rather
brittle ivory and short tusks, perhaps due to
calcium deficiency in the soils.
Damage caused by the high numbers
of elephants is rife in some areas. In fact,
concentration is so high throughout Chobe
that culls have been considered, but are too
controversial and have thus far been rejected.
At dry season, these elephants sojourn in
Chobe River and the Linyanti River areas. At
rain season, they make a 200-km migration
to the southeast stretch of the park. Their
distribution zone however outreaches the park
and spreads to northwestern Zimbabwe.
MOWANA LODGE
It is easy to see why Cresta Mowana Safari
Resort & Spa near the Chobe Game Reserve
was named after a baobab tree. This luxury
Chobe lodge was built around a majestic
800-year old specimen of Adansonia digitata.
Legends about baobabs abound, one being
that God uprooted the baobab and flung it
to the ground upside down, because it kept
walking when He first planted it into Chobe
soil.
Mowana Safari Lodge lies on the banks of
the Chobe river, where four African countries
(Botswana, Zambia, Namibia and Zimbabwe)
meet. At this point the Chobe and Zambezi
rivers converge – the Zambezi river being the
home of the NyamiNyami (or river god).