Tr [] NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC BOTSWANA A Gathering of Waters and Wildlife 5 stographer Frans Lanting offers provocative images—in bath ~of the life and landscape of the “great th EMBER 1990 Okavango Delta: Old Africa’s Last Refuge 38 the Hiquid 33 wildlife spe Stretwhing across northwestern Bow ver ensures the survival of eat income trying to ba discovered shortly after indep acy boosts its chances for success in a politically turbulent Arthur Zich and photographer Peter E: s fromabroad. k- meet the people of Be from native Bushmen ton Africa Map A double supple The Peales: America’s First Family of Art og Peale inspire ion—and his awn gi ‘matured against her. The fl val days se influence af U. Cobb, Ir by Frans Lanuing HAP INFORMATION CALL LaAGathering of Waters and Wildlife During a year in Rotswena's wilds | lived coming to] Twas often belly-down in sand, mud, or water, going as they went abou heir daily survival. Elephants ead pala thirst almost her ata water-hole, the A chameleon raises two feet ait a tite to bear the heat of Kalahari sand. A bullfrog, his eyes up like twin periscopes, becomes a stoic defender of x rain puddle that just with hint estivating etl rains ti soule the Stich are the seasms of the Kalahari, the °g peoples. For me the seasons turne the door to abundant life m the season of rea river rises in mountains N A aid dies tn stind and AFRICA ——. in its dying gives birth to rain from Angola's distant highlands rosses into northwestern iswana from Namibia, it fans out ta become the world’s largest inland delta. This que freshwater system is the pulsing heart of northern Botswana's wilderness, May ing with the Octaber-t Wet season, shrinking as weather returns Hanging over the de ‘a ina small tirplane, I weis striu by the fragility of th riverine lifeline hat sustains ands and the multi huge » af animals dependent on them. | have seen women wade across the river where itenters Botswana. A boy with a strong arm-could throw a stone across it. Yet this thread of a river creates an ecosystem of a and intri« cacy rivaling any on earth. From the air I could appre: ciate the abstract p he winding flow, but at water level | was deep in the wet and low of its reality When a hippo challenges, you forget its ecological role as keeper of swamps, dre of channels, and fert vegetation. At that m is a raiser of hair and a mer- chant of adrenaline Geographic, December 1990a Se {sone BeAw gret fans its wings The advantage? I can only herons, storks, pelicans, ibis, ima circle and fish speculate that the darkness ducks, geese, eagles, and in its own shade. After a few within the tenting of wings shorebir gather at thes in one sp s wings and sti off the water, allow ¢ again closin, bird a better view of its pr ched chnique floodplai ted from the delta. Egrets National Geogu We hs ‘s a 1M 7 yi mA ae Dil eee ps Ee 1g r : ); Ni )) \\ f a | vr r eM 3 » ev 4 2 ag , aeA day's end the shift hanges. Some an retreat to roosts or burrows, while others are just begin- ning a nighttime of activity, a rookery the fin ceding in lace afternoon is raucous, an almost grown egret grabs its parent by the bill demand ing the dis, ging of @ meal, which parent birds are increasingly reluctant to do as chicks grow older Lanimals have their own lta survival specialties, The knows catfish that cape t dryness of evaporating pondls by burrowing in the bottom that escape predators by sub merging up to their nostrils im water. uch behavior patterns may seem fantastic at first. But, of ‘ourse, they are adaptdttons to the special circumstances of the K earn more, | thari and the delta started my day at sundown I would sleep through the stw porous heat of midday and spend the lute afternoon pre- par ov night and what it had to teach, At sunset on a delta lagoon even the flowers change shifts. Day-blooming lilies like this one close, another ns toward eve- ning. T was in new companygin to hap pen outside my cam ching me as ard disturbances. Then muffled screams raise a pr ling of hairs. With an unease that perhaps goes b to our nd Wildli Viators own species” beginn savanna, I enter the night Those abroad know the dai I donot. Ido where ou es 1 half-glimy : He fle ey¢5 for an instant reflecting my str noitering in 2 hippe night Je crocs did not cp me waiting tongFast and powerful, an ostrich sprints across the Mal edge of this lonely landscape, the sand is pocked with animal prints. I count mtBy DOUGLAS B. LEE Nafroreat, GEBQNAPHIC SEONK Frare Photographs by FRANS LANTING Africa’ Last Refuge.ALAND OF S phant spoor and lion tracks, of drag marks mapping. final struggle. There are signs of rainstocome— flowers blossoming and females gravid in anticipation of water not yet promised by asingle cloud. There aresigns of a pastthat rock paintings made by Bushmen who lived in harmony with the land over millennia of constancy and change. There are traces of lakes long dead and streams born anew each yea One particular sheaf of gri id the drowned pathways of Botswit- na's Okavango Delta is a sign to Tshipariete, a member of the delta’s Bayei tribe, that he has found asure passage; “Here is the road,” he says and we pole and pull our dugout. mokoro canoes down one more shallow hippo trail into s lagoon where night lilies lie open to the sky All day everyday fora week we have ridden in mokare blazed an arc untouched by cloud, Now dusk has come ik balm and Venus is a torch in the sky. Hippos warn us in deep honking hat the river is theirs, that we should leav ome-tn the north of Botswana to make acquaintance with one of eserved cornersof wilderness left in the world, a place many call st of Old Africa, Largely unsettled, northern Botswana's pastiche of wetlands and rivers, dry woodlands and savannas covers one-third of a ination larger than France. Within its wildstive same of Mfrica’s last great free-roami above all cle ~elephants 60,000 strong, probably Africa’s largest herd With a cor minded but pragmatic government now forging policies that will decide their future, Botswana’s wilds could embody Afri ca’s besthope ofdeliveringsucha while the sun eswe t-scented treasure unspoiled into the com: ing millennium. Some days from the mokoras no siginsthat other humans nothing except wind splashing herds of aquatic antelope, the wild fluti screams of fish eagles. But other times reveal inroads of our spe lush islands dlenude cies: om stumps and ashes by slash- burn farming, crude racks for rying meat fromanimalshunted legally or otherwise, airplanes flying to scattered tourist lodges, footprints of domestic cattle. My twilight ruminations are shattered when a hippo re head and shoulders above the n engine. The head hat efuptsinto water, eyes round in outrage, and roars like @ st plungesand arrowstoward us, throwinga V-shaped ripple foam and pink jaws the size of wheelbarrows. Ihe comes any closer, bash off into the papyrus,” says Cecil Rig professional hunter and wilderness guide. He has tole me that hippos kill more people than dees any other animal in Africa. Looking at hu canines like ivory chisels, T understand how. The hippa comes closer and evel with us Cecil says, stepping from his makoro onto a mat of uff, Doug. Don't break through. There's ten feet ellows again, ey Right, time to zo, ‘Watteh thi a: Old Africa's Last Refuge Beds of fast-growing papyrus dominate the permancht swamps and waterways of the Okat- verigo River and tts delta (facing page), Papyrus growth can be so dense that it redirects the flow of water through dela, creating new watercourses Swantps are home to the Nile crocodile Below), which bree: mainly in che river's orthern section, called the Panhanulle. In the 1950s and 0s hunting. tightly restricted reduced crocodiles from 50,000 to seme 100 taday. Peaple verre inte the n duugenut eat noes, called rok stcer clear of the crace hat. ever —and whameveateenage apprentice poler, All fc as the apparition throws spray across our moken feet away from our only means out of this wilderness nothing. The hippo quiets and and flick of the ear , doing the ri 1 with a final gris a een adace Cecil laughs, we all laugh v relief, and Cecil pokes fun: Monnatsepe didn't know wh would get him first, the hippo a snake!” But he has serious th as we steal ay You can get lost out here can disappear, a ever know what hapy Over a supper of cornm cakes and guinea fowl stew, Cecil tells me of running cattle drives across the Kalahari Desert while lions trailed them. ‘Tshipariete murmurs Monn ing mats and t 1 his Seyei peasth gue to ankets by the fire Lask what he is sayin: teaching me how the youngst says: where we are and remember the islans and trees. I want to leart made orld. of his i: delta. £ by a river that rises in ighland esdeep suthern Afr Sprawled f western Bo ast OT) ANT the Os ge Deltais Massachusetts (map, page 47) it is but a shallow film soil perched austa eumbil Namib. byuncertainr Okavango River. Floodwaters from Angola rip to enter the 6i long Panhandle in northwestern Botswana. Some five months later ‘h the base of the delta, arriv- ing like solace at the meridian of the dry season in Jun ‘The waters fill the Boteti River and in the wettest years ¢ of the huge Mai in the world. At the af times watt way to connect the elta with asystem of rive a's northern borde: Between these feature ia's Capri hey rea gailikgadi salt pans—targ hrough the and wetland: Kalahari sand. Clay pans in the woodlands shi nk Botswa forests of acacia and mopani trees and avannas rooted National Geogcatch water during the wet season, and animals fan out through the bush. When the rains cease and the land dries, the herds seek the permanent waters of the Okavango Delta and the northern riverine border. Plains game and desert animals live cheek by jow! with hippos and crocodiles ina shifting mosair of migrations and changing habitats, ‘Only one-twelfth of Botswana's 1,3 million citizens live in its northern regions, But the roads here are soon to be tarred. The delta will then lie aday’s drive from Johannesburg, South Africa. Meanwhile planners arid engineers look to the Okavango as a resouree inva thirsty continent, and cattle owners eye its green grazing. As.a result, a developing, primarily agrarian country must weigh demands for land and wateragainst a unique opportunity to preserve its wild inheritance by using it as a renewable resource, through tourism and wildlife harvesting. ‘The key to all is water. None know this better than the nation’s domi- nant Tswana tribes, who have long lived on the Kalahari’s fringes. They call rain pula, also the name of the national currency—a word used in greeting, toast, blessing, a slogan of hope on Botswana's official seal. (