Monitoring of avian population trends in wetlands ecosystems can provide important information regarding the health of the system. This weekend, project staff will work with others in a water bird count along the Chobe River.  This program is done annually under Birdlife Botswana.

Dung in the wet system is a source of intense insect activity with dung beetles dropping from the sky as soon as the animal defecates. In this picture, a  crocodile right at the waters edge eats the elephant dung in order to consume all of the dung beetles. Ecosystem interactions and connections are complex, and often surprising, as this picture illustrates.

Tanaxu Khôâkx’oxo talks about the lack of water today
That was our food in the past and it was nice. Today we are not eating those foods because of water. We are suffering today because of water. In the past, even in the summer our water holes were full of water. Today there is no water in our water holes. In the past, when you arrived at Guxa you would hear frogs singing in the pools. In Goyi there was a borehole where we lived and we also stayed in Qeritcoroxa, which was full of water. These places were full of water at that time when we lived in the forest in the past. There was another place that was called Guitcuku and there was a borehole and pools that could not dry up.

From 
Community Natural Resources of
Bugakhwe and ||Anikhwe in the Okavango
Panhandle in Botswana
(Khwete Kx’ûîkarahî xudji kx’ei|am n|im ||Xomki)

Elephant herds are numerous along the Chobe River and most fecal waste identified along transects of the  river bank within in the park comes from this species. Field teams are identifying the influence of season on human animal  fecal loads by sampling along the bank and water across land uses in the system. Data already suggest that certain areas of the system have higher bacterial counts and sedimentation rates. We start the wet season transect  shortly.

The rains started and have transformed the environment. The flood plains, once dry and bare are now lush and green. Major thunder storms and torrential rainstorms wash soil and trash into the river.