Livestock or wildlife in western Ngamiland, Botswana: a case of who dares wins
Date
2016-09
Authors
Perkins, J. S., author
Brooks, C., author
Bourquin, S., author
Bradley, J., author
International Wildlife Ranching Symposium, publisher
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Abstract
Land use planning in North-western Botswana has reached a critical juncture. Key wildlife movements from the Okavango Delta System to the drier Kalahari have almost been cut-off by linear development, settlement expansion and dryland farming, along the margins of the Okavango Panhandle and Okavango Delta. Botswana's burgeoning elephant population is expanding outwards to an unprecedented degree, damaging fences and infrastructure and causing high levels of Human Elephant Conflict. Saline groundwater and an abundance of Dichapetalum cymosum has limited livestock expansion and currently vast areas of effectively ‘empty savannah' burn every year. Mobility is the key for the persistence of all the key wild ungulate populations and when this was lost in the Kalahari System thirty five years ago more than a half million blue wildebeest and red hartebeest perished never to recover. Fenced game and livestock ranches offer no substitute to an open system in which large ungulates are able to move between the Zambezian and Kalahari floristic domains. Game ranched populations cannot meaningfully contribute to the restocking of the free ranging populations as they become water dependent and behaviourally unable to survive in the harsh Kalahari environment. A hierarchy of options exist from visionary connectivity of north-western Botswana to the broader KAZA-TFCA, to the sectoral prioritization of a heavily subsidised beef sector. It would be a tragedy if the resolution of this natural resource management conflict followed that of the Kalahari System last century, where who dared won.
Description
Presented at the 9th international wildlife ranching symposium: wildlife - the key to prosperity for rural communities, held on 12-16 September 2016 at Hotel Safari & the Safari Court, Windhoek, Namibia.