Namib-Naukluft Park, Namibia

Covering almost 50,000km², the Namib-Naukluft National Park is one of the largest national parks in Africa, protecting one of the oldest deserts on earth, South America’s Atacama Desert being the other contender for this title. The Namib’s scenery is stunning, and its wildlife fascinating; you just need to make the time to stop and observe it.

Throughout the desert, and especially north of the Kuiseb River, the Namib has many expansive, flat plains of rock and stone. These come alive during the rains, when they will quickly be covered with tall thin grass and creeping yellow flowers, attracting herds of gemsbok, springbok and even Hartmann’s mountain zebra. During drier times there are fewer large mammals around, but still at night black-backed jackal, aardwolf and the occasional aardvark forage for termites, while bat-eared and Cape foxes scavenge for insects, reptiles, and anything else edible.

Spotted hyena and even the rare brown hyena are sometimes recorded here. Both leave distinctive white droppings, but only the sociable spotted hyenas make such eerie, mournful calls.

Resident larger birds include ostrich, secretary birds, Rüppell’s korhaan and Ludwig’s bustard, while enthusiastic ‘twitchers’ will seek the pale, apparently insignificant Gray’s lark (amongst other larks), which is endemic to the gravel plains of the Namib.

Dunes are everybody’s idea of a desert, and generally thought of as being bare and lifeless. Whilst this is not inaccurate for many deserts, the Namib is sufficiently old for endemic species to have evolved.

Various grasses grow on some of the more stable dunes, but most of the vegetable matter comes from wind-blown detritus. This collects at the bottom of the dunes, to be eaten by fish-moths (silver-fish), crickets and the many tenebrionid beetles – or tok tokkies, as they are known – near the base of the food chain. Particular tenebrionid species occur in specific environments, with those in the coastal fog belt adapting ingeniously to harness the available moisture.

These then provide food for spiders, geckos, lizards, and chameleons which, in turn, fall prey to sidewinder snakes. Rare Grant’s golden moles eat any small beetles or larvae that they can catch, and birds are mobile enough to move in and out of the dunes in search of the smaller animals. The dune lark is endemic to this region, and is seldom found outside the dune areas.

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