Ecologist advises Botswana government not to feed thirsty hippos at dried up lake

Lake Ngami, in the northwest near the Okavango Delta, is facing its second consecutive year without rain

(Solomon Tjinyeka)

By Solomon Tjinyeka for Weekend Post

Lake Ngami in northwestern Botswana has experienced another dry spell this year which resulted in the death of aquatic animals and species such as hippos and fish.

The dry spell also wiped out livestock as some were trapped in the muddy lakebed until they died. Attempting mitigation, the Department of Wildlife and National Parks (DWNP) has been feeding the hippos and also providing them with drinking water at the Lake.

However, a wetland ecologist from Okavango Research Institute (ORI) has advised the government through the Department of Wildlife and National Parks against this.

In an interview with this publication, Associate Professor of Wetland Ecology at ORI, Michael Murray-Hudson, advised the government not to drill boreholes to water wildlife.

He highlighted that while this may seem like a humane and common sense solution to the desiccation of the Lake, the net result is an increasing dependency on the availability of artificial water supply by wildlife, and a “locking-in” of human intervention to change natural processes.

Murray-Hudson added that the short-term beneficial effect of artificial water supply is greatly outweighed by the long-term effect of facilitating population increases in those targeted species, since normally inaccessible habitat is suddenly available on a long-term basis.

“Do we really want more elephants? And do we really want more hungry elephants in an area where they are competing with livestock and people for food and water?” Murray-Hudson asked.

He further highlighted that it is important first to recognise that the drying and filling of the Lake is an entirely natural process which is driven by the balance between the quantity of local rainfall (i.e., that which falls on the Delta itself) and the quantity and rate of delivery of the annual inflow at Mohembo, from where Cubango River feeds into the Delta.

He added that in this situation, people, livestock and wildlife become accustomed to the presence of water, and forget that the Lake had been dry for most of the years between the 1980s and 2010.

Prof Murray-Hudson also stressed that throughout the history of human beings in the area, Lake

Ngami has been ephemeral – that is, it has been much more often dry than holding water.

“People living around Lake Ngami in the past have managed to live there with their livestock, happily, for a couple of centuries at least,” he added.

For his part, the Director of Wildlife and National Parks, Dr Kabelo Senyatso has highlighted that from mid-October 2022, the Dept of Wildlife and National Parks has been feeding the hippos [which number twelve (12)], and also providing them with drinking water.

He added that the intention of the feeding programme is that they gain sufficient strength to walk away from Lake Ngami to seek other water bodies by themselves, which some hippos have already done.

Dr Senyatso, however stressed that if they do not move by themselves away from the lake by the end the first week in Nov 2022, active capture will be put in place to actively translocate them. He added that the timeline may be adjusted depending on the forecast.

He added that the timeline may be adjusted on the basis of the rainfall forecast. He also noted that the department of wildlife is working with local community trust, fishermen and a local NGO, Save Wildlife.

Dr Senyatso revealed that since October, seven hippos (six adults and one calf) have died due to starvation and/or thirst at Lake Ngami.

“You have to be aware that as part of their natural response mechanisms and adaptive capacities, when water bodies dry up, animals move off to other areas with water, which is what most wildlife have done in this case,” he stressed.

This article is reproduced here as part of the African Conservation Journalism Programme, funded in Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe by USAID’s VukaNow: Activity. Implemented by the international conservation organization Space for Giants, it aims to expand the reach of conservation and environmental journalism in Africa, and bring more African voices into the international conservation debate. Written articles from the Mozambican and Angolan cohorts are translated from Portuguese. Broadcast stories remain in the original language.

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