Blog: Botswana: finally! a good news story

On Safari in the Okavango Delta

During these dark times we can still dream, and there is good news around: Botswana’s famous inland Delta is renowned for being Africa’s best wildlife spot. The Delta’s ecosystem depends on the annual flood and for the last five years it’s been weak. This year it’s outstanding! Good news for wildlife, birds and the whole ecosystem. Whether you ride, drive or walk a safari to Botswana is as good as it gets.

Rainfall in the mountains of Angola determines the water level in the Delta which is measured at the village of Rundu in Namibia’s Caprivi Strip. This morning (St George’s Day) it reads 6.6m compared to the five-year average of 5.38, so it’s going to be an outstanding flood.

We can’t travel to Botswana at the moment, and my heart goes out to all those remote, specialist lodges that make a Delta safari so life-changingly special. But one day it will come back. And perversely, the absence of human traffic and activity is really good news for the animals, great and small. It’s a funny old world.

For all you technical people, here’s the Rundu report