Qualla: Bwabwata National Park

Bwabwata National Park: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jedesto, CC BY-SA 4.0. Most national parks draw a hard line: people on one side of the fence, wild animals on the other. Bwabwata erases the line. Some 5,500 people live inside this park, in villages strung along a tarred highway, growing crops and grazing cattle in the same bush where elephant herds pass through on their way between four countries. Stretched thin along Namibia's Caprivi Strip - barely 40 kilometres top to bottom but 190 across - Bwabwata is less a fortress for wildlife than a negotiated truce between the people who farm here and the animals who have always migrated through.

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Image: Jedesto | CC BY-SA 4.0

Bwabwata National Park: A Finger of Land Between Two Rivers

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eugen Zibiso, CC BY 2.0. Look at a map of Namibia and the Caprivi Strip leaps out: a long, thin panhandle reaching east toward the Zambezi, a colonial-era oddity that left Namibia bordering four neighbours at once. Bwabwata fills much of it. The Okavango River marks the western edge, the Kwando the easte...

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Image: Eugen Zibiso | CC BY 2.0

Bwabwata National Park: The Elephant Road

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Theseus, CC BY-SA 3.0. Bwabwata's real importance is as a corridor. It sits at the heart of the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area, a vast cross-border park shared by Namibia, Angola, Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe - one of the largest conservation zones on the planet. Through this gap, Af...

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Image: Theseus | CC BY-SA 3.0

Bwabwata National Park: A Park Its People Help Run

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Roger Culos, CC BY-SA 3.0. Most of Bwabwata's residents are Khwe San, one of southern Africa's most marginalized communities, whose ancestors lived in this country for millennia before the parks and highways arrived. Rather than evict them, Namibia chose a different model. The land is zoned - core areas at...

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Image: Roger Culos | CC BY-SA 3.0

Bwabwata National Park: Fire, Bush, and Balance

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dr. Thomas Wagner, CC BY-SA 3.0. The land here is restless. Fire sweeps through almost every year, sparked by lightning or by people, and while these savannas evolved to burn, the timing and frequency matter enormously - too much fire or too little can both push the ecosystem out of balance. Long-term studies be...

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Image: Dr. Thomas Wagner | CC BY-SA 3.0