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For millennia, great herds of wildlife traveled across Northern Botswana, through the Okavango Delta, to reach the nutrient rich grasses of the Makgadikgadi-Nxai Pans and the Central Kalahari. Local people shared the landscape with these herds and their predators, an essential part of the balanced system. However, over time many of these people were forcibly removed from their lands for the creation of National Parks and commercial livestock grazing lands, and fences were raised across the landscape to limit the spread of livestock diseases.
While still supporting some of the world’s richest biodiversity, Northern Botswana is now also characterized by disrupted migrations and community exclusion from land management.
Through scientific and community partnerships, Round River is helping to restore wildlife migrations, improve land use practices, and re-integrate communities into land management decision-making.
We are currently working with in-country partners to collect data on land-use practices, wildlife movement patterns, and community priorities around relationships with tourism companies.
Our students spend their time in the Okavango Delta, assisting Sankoyo, Mababe, and Khwai Community Trusts with wildlife surveys, capacity building, and community outreach programs.
Our closest partners in this region are The University of Botswana’s Okavango Research Institute, Wild Entrust, Natural Selection, and Community Trusts.
In Northern Botswana, a long history of community exclusion from the land, and its management, has exacerbated the negative economic and ecological effects of changing climatic conditions, human-wildlife conflict, and unsustainable land-use. We are working with our community and research partners to address the root of these issues by re-integrating biodiversity conservation and community well-being.
We are helping communities and private conservancies to collect essential data of wildlife movements and populations, and are collaborating with local community trusts in the development of sustainable land-use practices.
Round River is also working with our partners at Natural Selection Safaris to negotiate mutually-beneficial agreements between communities and tourism companies to support long-term ecological and economic health in the region.
We have been working with Round River Botswana, the University of Botswana’s Okavango Research Institute (ORI) and local Community Trusts since 20XX (to confirm date) with wildlife monitoring transects across a X Wildlife Management Areas in northern Botswana. We have also been contributing to rare and threatened bird population monitoring since 20XX.
We are in the foundational planning and partnership development stages of the BCCI. The initiative is intended to aid community partners in developing sustainable land-use practices that promote conservation-based economic opportunities, wildlife habitats and movements, and climate change resilience. The cornerstone of this initiative is the Botswana Community and Conservation Fund (BCCF), a community, tourism, and international philanthropy cooperative. The BCCF establishes a perpetual means for communities to maintain and expand sustainable land-use practices, as well as to further tourism relations and cooperative economic developments.
We are providing on-going technical support for TRTFN land and water stewardship work associated with the Tlatsini (Places that make us strong) Vision. We are supporting the development of a regional map of areas of high ecological and cultural value to inform land use planning efforts and government-to-government collaborative management arrangements.
Maggie Triska
Conservation Director
maggie@roundriver.org
Office: 801-359-4250
Ben Szydlowski
Student Programs Co-Director
benszyd@roundriver.org
Office: 801-359-4250 x5
