Central Kalahari

The Central Kalahari Game Reserve was established in 1961 in the centre of Botswana and at some 52,800 km² it is one of the most extensive protected areas in the world, with an area comparable to that of Croatia.

Its landscape is one of arid savannah on Kalahari sands, with thorn scrub, grassland and the fossil valleys of Deception, Passarge and Okwa, riverbeds that stopped flowing millennia ago and that today can only be made out by their denser vegetation and by the depressions that flood after exceptional rains. Wildlife concentrates in those valleys and in the pans during the brief wet season, when the green grass draws large gatherings of herbivores.

It is famous for its black-maned Kalahari lions, adapted to survive long periods without drinking, as well as for cheetah, gemsbok, springbok and meerkats. The reserve was originally created as a territory for the San or Bushmen, who have lived there for thousands of years, but from the 1990s the Botswanan government promoted their resettlement outside its boundaries, including the closure of boreholes. In 2006 the High Court of Botswana ruled that those evictions had been illegal and unconstitutional, although the actual return has remained contentious.