This picture shows a weathered female lion looking and walking, through the gray-greenish scrub growth, straight toward the camera. This area was underwater not long ago. The lioness has a determined look on her face with narrowed eyes and lips drawn tight. Lifting her right leg shows the size of the paw and musculature of her shoulders and legs.
This picture was taken in the Linyanti Reserve. The Linyanti River (later named the Chobe River), forms the natural border between Namibia and Botswana. Linyanti Wildlife Reserve is located on the southern banks of the Linyanti River. Chobe National Park is the western boundary for The Linyanti Wildlife Reserve. The last stretches of Africa's Great Rift Valley separate the forests of the interior from the rivers and floodplains of the Linyanti and it is along this ridge - and along the Savuti Channel - that the best wildlife can be seen. The Channel stopped flowing between 1980 and 2008; during this time it was an unusual and productive ribbon of grassland that served as a corridor and feeding ground in the surrounding woodland for a wide variety of herbivores.
In 2008 the Savute Channel once more became a deep, clear waterway harboring hippo and aquatic life with myriad varieties of water birds. Wildlife, from plains game to a plethora of predators, has had to adapt to a new source of water and all the opportunities and menaces it brought with it. For different species the channel has become a place of refuge, an obstacle, and unrivalled food source, a navigational aid, a larder, a playground, and a graveyard. It is impossible to say yet whether the waters will persist or begin to recede in earnest as much of this will depend on summer rains.
The Linyanti area is renowned for its predators and large concentrations of game, particularly elephant. Dereck and Beverly Joubert made the region famous in their National Geographic films. "Eternal enemies" is a classic, and chronicles in detail the interaction between lion and hyena. National Geographic estimates "Eternal enemies" has been seen by over a billion viewers. |
