02 Oct 2024

Chobe National Park has collected over P30 million in park entrance fees from January 2024 to date.

The fees were generated by 276 400 people who visited the park from different countries across the world including Batswana.

Chobe National Park is one of the world’s leading wildlife destinations with a high density of elephants offering tourists an option for game viewing on a safari drive or explore by a boat in the mighty Chobe River, a boundary of the park.  

According to the 2022 KAZA Elephant Survey report, Botswana is home to a total of 131 909 elephants, which qualifies as the highest volume in the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA TFCA) states.  

The survey outlines that the estimated total number of elephant population across the KAZA region was 227 900.

It further reports that the distribution and density of elephants was recorded as high at permanent sources of Okavango and Chobe-Linyanti-Kwando river systems as well as part of North Matebeleland in Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe.

In an interview, Chobe acting wildlife regional director Mr Ernest Madimabe stated that wildlife and environment conservation was very essential for the Chobe ecosystem.

He said this is why they conducted routine patrols in the entire park and engaged with the tour operators through conference sittings to evaluate utilization of park facilities like roads and picnic sites.
Mr Madimabe pointed out that The Department of Wildlife and National Parks collaborated with other government departments, NGOs, private sector and community trusts to advocate for biodiversity conservation and discuss mitigations to address human wildlife conflict. 

He said the department had appointed Okavango Research Institute as consultant to develop the National Human Wildlife Conflict Strategy for the design and monitoring implementation of human wildlife conflict interventions in Botswana.  Furthermore, he said they engaged with communities on conservation issues, more-especially in the management of the community hunting quotas in order to ensure maximum utilization of the quota for community benefits

“Human wildlife conflict is a challenge in Chobe district, however we work extensively by addressing communities during Kgotla meetings and farmers associations’ meetings in order to share information on how best we can come up with human wildlife conflict mitigation interventions to address this conflict.”

He said 2024, declared a drought year, posed a threat to different wildlife species, especially elephants due to the prolonged dry season until the next rains.

“Elephants cover long distances in search of preferable forage along the Chobe River, which results in calculated numbers of mortalities threatening elephant populations as the carcasses are recorded while on their way from water bodies,” he said.

Moreover, he remarked that most elephants and other species like zebras, buffalos, concentrated along the Chobe River for forage and water which contributed to land degradation and erosion.

Mr Madimabe stated that drought significantly leads to loss of biodiversity and an increase in human wildlife inter-face, translating to increasing human-wildlife conflict incidents.

On fishing, he said since the beginning of the year, there had been low to zero harvesting of fish in the Linyanti-Chobe River basin because Chobe River didn’t flow westwards, pushing down water on floodplains as a result of Zambezi River overflows. ENDS