Okavango

Contains more than 130 photographs, taken during a year-long assignment in the Okavango Delta by award-winning photographer and naturalist Frans Lanting. Spreading over 8500 square miles, this vast wetland in the heart of the Kalahari supports an unparallelled diversity of wildlife. From its origins in the highlands of Angola, the Okavango River descends of the near-desert of northern Botswana, where it fans out as the world's largest inland delta; and ecosystem of a size and complexity rivalling any on earth, a rare place where desert and swamp dwellers meet. Hippos, crocodiles, zebra, impala, buffalo, giraffes, lions, hyenas, and the continent's largest unharassed elephant population find refuge and replenishment in the seasonal ebb and flow of fresh water into the delta.
Together, Lanting's words and images tell the dynamic movement of water throughout the year and of the rhythms of flora and fauna in response to it; of the spectacular array of wild creatures; of the people who live in this frontier region; and, finally, in a thoughtful epilogue, of the difficult environmental challenges faced by this complex natural system and its hopeful future as a place where Africa's free-roaming wildlife stands a chance of surviving intact into the twenty-first century.