The Best of Botswana - Rod Laurence, written up by Penny Avant

Unfenced nature reserves make up 20% of the landmass in Botswana and in one evening Rod took us on a tour that encompassed the Nxai Panis National Park on the edge of the Kalahari Desert and the luxuriant equatorial forests of Chobe National Park. We got a taste of ‘real’ nature and the inevitable danger of being in an area that is not “sanitised” with animals behind fences. No health and safety laws here!

Rod’s passion is the forest and he told us of the way the animals shape its ecology. Forests are not, as we might imagine, all trees. Large gaps are created by elephants going about their business of eating and destroying trees. With the shade gone grass grows in these gaps, kept short by springboks, antelopes that are adapted to living on the poor vegetation. The elephants walk through the gaps on their way to waterholes defecating as they go. Their droppings contain acacia seeds; a few germinate and islands of acacia trees, too prickly for the springboks to eat, gradually grow up.  These trees provide shade for cheetahs, which keep the springboks away, so the grass grows longer, more vegetation grows up and what was short grass becomes scrub. Gradually, gradually trees grow until back come the elephants and it all starts all over again…..

The antelopes fascinated me. There are about 80 species of antelope in Africa. Each species exploits a different food source and habitat, and all have found different ways of avoiding being eaten by predators, the lions, cheetahs and leopards. The grass-eating springboks found in the newly formed gaps are built for speed to outrun them; in the longer grass tiny antelopes called steinbok thrive because it appears that they are too small to be a worthwhile meal. In areas of scrub the small trees create shadow and large kudu, with wonderful spiralled horns that need to be seen to be believed, rely on camouflage rather than their legs to avoid being eaten. The water antelope has longer back legs than front legs that somehow make it so at home in water that chased by a lion it will survive if it can get into the marsh. My favourites were the waterbuck   that has hollow hairs filled with a foul-tasting fluid that keep it safe from being eaten and the oryx that has truly green knees, but this is beginning to sound like the Just So Stories.

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It wasn’t all antelopes. We saw crocodiles and hippos, pelicans and the open-billed stork that is able to prize just one particular species of water snail out of its shell. There were kingfishers galore, bee-eaters and the skimmer that has very short legs and a large beak for scooping up water as it flies. We saw the predators, the lions, cheetahs and leopards lying in wait, and of course vultures that clean up the carcasses of dead animals.

Rod spoke about the effects of climate change. “Nature is not just for weekends” and whether we like it or not we are part of nature; we depend upon it for life. In Botswana rain patterns are changing, rivers are drying up, marshlands are becoming semi-desert; these changes are disturbing the delicate and dynamic balance of nature. Imagine if the one species of snail that the open-billed stork can prize out of its shell were to become extinct; not just the snail but the stork could vanish too. Following the talk there was considerable discussion about climate change. It has happened before, but in the past changes that today are happening in two generations took thousands of years, which allowed time for species to adapt or move. Now there is no time for natural adaptations, extinctions are occurring at an unprecedented rate and, we asked, what do we do?  There was, of course no easy answer. For me this is one reason why I belong to the RSPB, because they lobby MPs, they provide me with post cards to send and petitions to sign in addition to encouraging me to live in as ecofriendly way as possible.

So it was an evening of excitement, of stories, of the ecology of forests and deserts and marshes, of ‘real’ nature. It was also an evening to make you think, which is, I am sure, what Rod intended.