World Savers Awards 2013
What: One of the world’s most important wetlands.
Where: Botswana, where the Okavango River ends in the desert.
Because: The government is ensuring that tourism protects the environment and benefits local people.
The jewel in Botswana’s tourism crown is the Okavango Delta: Some 200,000 visitors come every year to see where a river that begins as the Cubango in Angola disappears into the Kalahari Desert sands, creating one of the world’s only inland freshwater deltas and a habitat for wildlife from cheetahs to rhinos. Conservation efforts have been so successful that the delta is now home to the largest population of African savanna elephants. But that poses its own challenges: Unlike the rest of Southern Africa, where elephants are slaughtered for their tusks, the Okavango has too many pachyderms. The animals are encroaching on settlements and damaging crops and property. Botswana is forging solutions to Africa’s greatest conservation challenge: the conflict between human populations and increasingly endangered wildlife.
The country is developing the area sustainably by ensuring that high-end, low-impact tourism benefits the local people. Instead of rushing to cull the elephants, the government works with private companies like Wilderness Safaris—another World Savers winner—which tracks movements of the herds and trains farmers to fend off the animals by planting chilies around crops as a natural deterrent. (Elephants don’t like capsaicin, the compound in chilies that makes them hot.)
The elephant effort is just one of many projects addressing endangered wildlife. The government also partnered with Wilderness Safaris on a rhino relocation program, transporting the animals to Chief’s Island in the delta. To date, 11 white rhinos have been born in the wild, and 32 are running free. Next up: a certification system to encourage travel companies to use responsible practices. Cherri Briggs, Condé Nast Traveler’s safari specialist for Southern Africa, can curate an environmentally responsible luxury Botswana safari (888-596-6377).
Photo at top: John Warburton-Lee Photography / Alamy
