Etosha National Park

In central northen Namibia the flat landscape is dotted with a number of large salt pans, slight depressions made by wind action. The most famous is Etosha Pan, which resides in the eponymous Etosha National Park, a vast area of over 20 000km² that protects a wealth of wildlife.

Etosha means ‘great white place’ and indeed its immense salt pan stretches blinding white across 5000km² (120km across and 55km from north to south). Once an ancient super lake, today a few rivers and occasional heavy summer rains fill the pan (in good years attracting more than a million flamingos to its salty waters), but for the most part it is parched and dry, on its edges however there are a number of springs and waterholes which during the dry months attract the wildlife. Even during the wetter summer months they remain productive drawing elephant, giraffe, zebra, wildebeest, black rhino, springbok, gemsbok, the endemic black faced impala and their predators. Bird life is prolific with 340 species to be seen , amongst them 10 of Namibias14 endemic bird species.

On the southern boundary of Etosha National Park lies Ongava Game Reserve, formed in 1991 when the shareholders of Ongava converted four unproductive cattle ranches into a prolific 30 000 hectare private concession, now a haven to large concentrations of wildlife. The Ongava Game Reserve forms an extension of Etosha National Pak, which enables large game such as elephant and lion to move between the two areas. Most general game has been reintroduced onto the property, including springbok, gemsbok, wildebeest, burchell’s zebra, hartmann’s mountain zebra, waterbuck, red hartebeest, giraffe, eland and the largest population of black faced impala outside of Etosha.

The most successful reintroduction on the reserve however is that of the white and black rhino. A large boma allows for careful reintroduction of translocated rhino to the region. At present, Ongava holds one of the largest rhino custodianships for the Namibian government. These custodianships are set up in safe havens throughout the country in hopes of breeding rhino to more sustainable numbers and reintroducing them into areas where previously flourished.