by Mariel Ferragamo, of Colby College
It’s been one month that we’ve been stationed here in the Makgadikgadi Pans National Park of Botswana.
Our research in the park was focused on a wildlife fence put up inside the park that was designed to prevent livestock from entering the park, and keep wildlife staying within park boundaries to mitigate human-wildlife conflict. We conducted transects along the fence to understand the impact that it has on the success of wildlife populations, as it often inhibits access to the neighboring Boteti River for water to many crucial animals in the park. This has been an eye-opening experience for us to understand the intricacies of balancing community development and economic growth with conservation of wildlife.
The Makgadikgadi Pans National Park entrance sign—where it all begins!
While working inside the National Park has been an incredible learning opportunity, there’s a lot more to the area that we have been able to experience as well. We were able to work with the local communities to promote environmental stewardship. Local NGOs like WildCRU and Elephants for Africa have been working with us on our research, and we have been visiting schools in the area to help with their environmental conservation programs. We had a ton of fun working with the students to get them excited about topics such as studying science and protecting wildlife. Our local instructor, Cosmos, has also taught us a lot about the area and Botswana in general. On a day that it was my turn to cook, he even helped me prepare a traditional meal of cooked vegetables and pap, a dish made from ground-up cornmeal. All in all, it has been a valuable experience to interact with the community and learn about their culture and perspectives on conservation.
Cosmos and I are making a lunch of pap and cooked vegetables for our group at Meno a Kwena camp.
There are a lot of wildlife areas in this region of Botswana, we have been lucky enough to experience a couple this month. We spent time venturing farther into the Makgadikgadi to see the pans, a natural phenomenon of open dirt landscapes that fill up with water half of the year, but remains dry the other half. When full, the pans are an important spot for the wildlife. Even when dry, we saw hundreds of zebras grazing nearby among ostrich and Kori bustard, another large bird in this area—this scene was perhaps my favorite sighting thus far! We also took a trip to the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, a protected area that shares major migration corridors with the Makgadikgadi for many animals. At these areas, we were able to see a lot of interesting wildlife, including ostrich, giraffe, oryx, zebra, and springbok. We’ve been learning a lot about natural history here, and it has been very rewarding to be able to identify so much flora and fauna while in the field.
Some giraffes checking us out in our vehicles near the pans of the Makgadikgadi, a photo I took through my binoculars for a close-up.
It’s been a great time in the Makgadikgadi and now that we have assembled most of our data, we are off to the Delta to observe even more of the spectacular wildlife and landscapes that Botswana has to offer!