Instagram – May 8th, 2019

“The question is, are we happy to suppose that our grandchildren may never be able to see an elephant except in a picture book?” Happy birthday Sir David Attenborough 🎉 And we sincerely hope that our grandchildren will be able to enjoy the wildlife of our planet, in part thanks to your incredible efforts 🙏🏼 🙏🏼 #Repost @jamessuter with @get_repost
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Happy Birthday to Sir David Attenborough – who I first learned about the Okavango Delta from, and who, through his work, taught me so much about our natural world. Watching David Attenborough documentaries growing up – this place (the Okavango Delta) seemed surreal, I feel so privileged to visit this area often now.

This image is of elephants in the delta from the air. Seeing this wild place from the this vantage point is always so rewarding. The delta is so unique and known by many as the ‘miracle delta’. The reason for this is that under cloudless skies at the driest time of Botswana’s year, when rain is both a fading memory & a distant promise, a flood comes to the Okavango Delta.
Generated by rainfall 500 miles
(804.7 kilometers) and two countries away in the highlands of Angola, the flood wave snakes down the Okavango River and spreads across the delta, swelling its lagoons and channels and spilling outward to inundate its floodplains. In a land withered by drought, this gift of water is like unction, and all nature responds to it.

The miracle also happens in slow motion, for this part of southern Africa is so flat that the floodwaters take three months to reach the delta and four more to traverse its 150-mile (241.4 kilometer) length. Yet by the time its force is spent, the flood has increased the Okavango’s wetland area by two or three times, creating an oasis up to half the size of Lake Erie at the edge of the Kalahari Desert. To see it from the air means seeing the contrasting colour of dry land and green areas around this ‘oasis’ and the diverse range of wildlife that inhabits this wilderness area that is currently well protected. It really is like no other place on earth. A jungle-like oasis within desert terrain, teeming with wild animals – creatures great and small.