By Caroline Frigon, University of Vermont
Greetings from beautiful Botswana! The weather is lovely and we are having a wonderful time getting to know each other and this new place. I think it’s safe to say that everyone has favorite animals to watch –and that for many of us, elephants (Loxodonta africana) are on the list. We have been learning about these giants through observation and conversations with Kaggie, Samara, Sixteen, and Cosmos (our trip leaders).
As it turns out, elephants are more than just charismatic creatures with an affinity for plants; they are also ecosystem engineers who influence and alter their environment significantly. Much like humans, they modify the world around them to better suit their needs. Here in NG18 at Tau Camp, we get to see this first-hand in the endless fields of Mopane.
Mopane (Colophospermum mopane) is a species of tree that elephants love to browse, possibly because of its relatively high nutritional value. The elephants will happily eat many parts of the tree: the leaves, roots, and bark.
Because this is one of their favorite foods, the elephants practice a sort of Bonsai gardening technique on Mopane. They trim the trees down to the perfect feeding height, and strategically munch on higher branches to encourage the trees to remain shrubby. The elephants’ Mopane gardening habits shape the landscape of Botswana: they knock down tall trees, they act as seed dispersers, and they even influence how trees grow. When driving through Khwai, where we are now, we pass through what looks like rotational crops; there are Mopane stumps, fields of Mopane shrubs about two meters high, and full-grown Mopane woodlands. Everywhere, mature trees bear the scars of elephants’ tusks.
Mopane is as important for people as it is for elephants in Botswana. Sixteen, one of our program leaders, described Mopane to us as “the tree of life” because of its many human uses. The tree makes excellent firewood, is used to build fences and traditional houses, and even provides food for us in the form of the Mopane worm, an edible species of worm that relies on the tree for food.
Although we haven’t gotten the chance to eat Mopane worms here at camp, we have been enjoying the realities of sharing resources with animals. We have met granola-stealing vervet monkeys and chair-dwelling skinks. We wake up to a chorus outside of our cabins and tents; we hear the tinny calls of the blacksmith lapwing, the never-ending refrains of the red-eyed dove, the roars of lions, and the grunts of hippos.
Already, this experience has been incredible; living and studying in the bush with this new family is both challenging and invigorating. There is always another creature to learn about or observe, whether it’s an Egyptian fruit bat hanging above your hammock, a sand snake interrupting class, or a thorny shrub tugging at your sleeve. Just in the first week of being in Botswana, our species list broke 100. Everywhere, we see complicated ecological relationships manifesting themselves in patterns across the landscape. We are so lucky to have the chance to study here, and I can’t wait to see what the next couple of months bring.
The very first glimpse of an elephant that we got in Botswana was through the leaves of a Mopane tree that the elephant was browsing.