Elephant, Chobe National Park, Botswana (photo)

Chobe National Park. Chobe National Park is probably best known for its spectacular elephant sightings the population is estimated at around 70,000 elephants today, Chobe National Park is said to have the highest concentration of elephants in Africa. At Chobe you can get so close to elephants that you can hear the deep rumblings as they communicate with each other. With the estimated population of around 70 000, Loxodonta Africana is both plentiful and, because of tight restrictions on hunting, remarkably tolerant of a traveller’s attention. Elephants living here are Kalahari elephants, the largest in size of all known elephant subspecies. Yet they are characterized by rather brittle ivory and short tusks, most likely due to calcium deficiency in the soil. Damage caused by the high numbers of elephants is rife in some areas of the Chobe National Park. In fact, concentration is so high throughout Chobe that culls have been considered, but are too controversial and have thus far been rejected. In the dry season, these elephants sojourn in the Chobe River and Linyanti River areas taking advantage of the permanent water in the area by the end of the dry season the area looks totally stripped of all nutrients, dry and desolate. When the rains come the elephants start moving south on a 200km migration path to the southern reaches of the park. After the rain there are pools of water in the bush and they can graze on trees and grasses lush from the summer rain. Once these pools start drying up they once again make their way to the permanent waters of the Chobe River. The distribution of these elephants is however not restricted to the Chobe National Park. Photographed in 2013