Wildlife of Zambia

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Upper Lupande Game Management Area (GMA) Herd Bush Elephants Lupande Zambia Jul23 A7C 06143.jpg
Upper Lupande Game Management Area (GMA)

The wildlife of Zambia refers to the natural flora and fauna of Zambia. This article provides an overview, and outline of the main wildlife areas or regions, and compact lists of animals focusing on prevalence and distribution in the country rather than on taxonomy. More specialized articles on particular groups are linked from here.

Contents

Overview

Ecoregions

Using the World Wildlife Fund's classification of ecoregions, Zambia may include miombo, mopane and Baikiaea woodland savanna, with grasslands (mainly flooded grasslands) and evergreen forest also present. The chief determinant of the distribution of ecoregions and wildlife is climate. See Climate of Zambia for more detail.

Animals outside the national parks

Zambia's "big game" wildlife (including sports fishing) is the foundation of its tourism industry now. One of its biggest employers and foreign-exchange earners: Victoria Falls and cultural events come second and third in importance. However for domestic tourism, this order is reversed and wildlife is not as important, since the national parks and game viewing tours, through which the great majority of the wildlife is experienced, are priced and marketed to international tourism.

In the early part of the 20th century, most of Zambia's rural areas supported wildlife at levels similar to that seen in national parks today, and the 'big five' game animals were widespread outside reserves and parks. Of them today, the rhinoceros is almost extinct. The elephant and lion are found almost exclusively in parks, and the African buffalo is found in or close to parks. Of the other large animals, only the spotted hyena, Nile crocodile, hippopotamus, and lechwe are found in numbers outside parks. The former from its success as a scavenger, the latter three since their aquatic habit has less overlap with human activities.

Pod of hippopotamuses Hippo pod edit.jpg
Pod of hippopotamuses

The cause of this decline is the four-fold increase in human population in the last fifty years and consequent loss of habitat, especially of forest and woodland. Although commercial farming and ranching is responsible for land-clearing and the elimination of carnivores and competing herbivores, the amount of land used commercially is actually small. The more widespread and less intensive subsistence farming known as chitemene shifting cultivation is more to blame (responsible for about 9000 km2 of woodland deforestation per year), along with charcoal production (responsible for about 2000 km2 of woodland deforestation per year). [1]

Secondly, poverty has accompanied the population growth. In the economic boom of the 1940s and 1950s, the mines and factories of the Copperbelt provided wages to pay for food grown commercially on a relatively small amount of land. A large decrease in such employment over the past two or three decades has forced more people back to the rural areas to carry out subsistence agriculture and fishing, which puts pressure on a greater area of wildlife habitat. Increased unreliability of wet season rainfall, perhaps caused by global warming, exacerbates the problem.

Thirdly, poor environmental management by government and a certain amount of corruption in some quarters has allowed poaching and uncontrolled exploitation of resources. Some national parks have had no management at all. In previous centuries, traditional rulers had greater control of hunting and natural resources. For example Lewanika, king of Barotseland, established the Liuwa Plain game reserve which today is a national park. The possibility of recruiting chiefs as modern-day managers of natural resources is hampered by rivalries with political leaders. The downgrading of their status and power by government and the erosion of traditional culture by modern materialism has also worsened the situation.

Against this background, the animals which continue to flourish in Zambia outside parks are those with little food or other resource value, with less overlap with human habitat, or which can survive in human habitats. These include: most birds, except those whose breeding habitats are reduced; smaller mammals, such as bats, shrews, rodents, mongooses, the nocturnal small cats, vervet monkeys and galagos; and reptiles such as the Nile monitor and most snakes and lizards, except forest species.

Animals in protected areas

Map showing Zambia's 20 national parks. Zambia National Parks Map.png
Map showing Zambia's 20 national parks.

Five out of 20 national parks have lost most of their wildlife due to a lack of management. Of the remaining 15, two exist primarily for features other than wildlife (Nyika Plateau and Victoria Falls), and the rest have reasonably good wildlife resources despite some poaching.

National parks protect 6.4% of the country. They all have larger game management areas (GMAs) as buffer zones around them in which hunting is subject to regulation, as it is in forest reserves which have additional regulations about land clearing and timber harvesting. Adequate patrolling and the enforcing of regulations has always been a problem, and illegal hunting and bush clearing still happens within protected areas.

GMAs cover 15.6% of the country and forest reserves cover 7.2%, so 29.2% of the country is protected in theory (based on 1992 figures). [2]

Wildlife regions

The main wildlife-rich areas of the country are:

Northern Province

Muchinga Province

Luapula Province

Eastern Province

Copperbelt Province

The most urban and industrial of Zambia's provinces lacks wildlife, except in the south-west where in flooded grassland habitats interspersed with miombo woodland, and except for birdlife, which is well represented near rivers and small lakes between towns.

Central Province

Lusaka Province

North-Western Province

Western Province

Southern Province

This has the highest proportion of commercial farmland of any Zambian province. In these areas, wildlife has been displaced. However, the north-east part of the state includes Kafue National Park (see Central Province above), as well as:

Mammals

Primates

Carnivores

Odd-toed ungulates

Even-toed ungulates

Antelope

  • Blue wildebeest (gnu, Connochaetes taurinus) – large grey-brown antelope, common, often in large herds
  • Bushbuck (Tragelaphus scriptus) – light brown coat, dark in places, with up to seven white stripes and white splotches on the sides; not rare but difficult to see, normally hide in dense cover
  • Common duiker (Sylvicapra grimmia) common, but very small, hides in thickets; several other species found in Zambia: blue duiker (Cephalophus monticola), yellow-backed duiker (Cephalophus silvicultor), red forest duiker (Cephalophus natalensis)
  • Common eland (Tragelaphus oryx) – the largest antelope, weighing about 600 kg
  • Greater kudu (Tragelaphus strepsiceros) – males have unmistakable large spiralling horns, both sexes have large rounded ears
  • Impala (Aepyceros melampus) – medium-sized, common in large groups, known for characteristic jumping when startled
  • Klipspringer (Oreotragus oreotragus) – a smallish stocky antelope with hooves adapted to climbing rocks, like a mountain goat, shy, seen only in Luangwa, rarely
  • Lechwe (Kobus leche) – an antelope of swamps and floodplains often found wading and grazing floating vegetation, it occurs in huge herds in the Bangweulu swamps (black subspecies), smaller herds on the Kafue Flats and Busanga Plain (red and Kafue subspecies)
  • Lichtenstein's hartebeest (Alcelaphus lichtensteinii) – found on floodplains, dambos and savannahs, common in Kafue
  • Oribi (Ourebia ourebi) – a small antelope of grassland habitats, common in Kafue
  • Puku (Kobus vardonii) – a mid-sized antelope with a fuzzy coat, common on dambos and other wet grasslands of northern/north-western Zambia
  • Sable antelope (Hippotragus niger) – large antelope with a deep brown or black coat, white belly and face, with long backward-arching horns, very similar to a roan antelope
  • Roan antelope (Hippotragus equinus) – similar to the sable antelope but with a lighter, redder coat; fairly common in Kafue
  • Sharpe's grysbok (Raphicerus sharpei) – a small shy solitary antelope similar to a duiker, quite common
  • Sitatunga (Tragelaphus spekii) – dark forequarters and a light brown body and hind quarters, delicately marked with white spots and stripes, this is a seldom-seen medium to large antelope of papyrus swamps in which it can swim to escape predators; rare in Kafue, often seen in Kasanka NP and Bangweulu
  • Southern reedbuck (Redunca arundinum) – common in Kafue grazing on dambos
  • Steenbok (steinbok, Raphicerus campestris) – small antelope similar to the oribi, occasionally seen in Kafue
  • Topi (tsessebe, Damaliscus lunatus) – a large fast-running antelope, dark brown with yellow markings on the legs, which occurs in groups on plains, not common
  • Waterbuck (Kobus ellipsiprymnus) – long-haired, often shaggy with a brown-grey coat and a white ring on the rump, common in Luangwa, often in large herds, but the defassa subspecies common in Kafue and Sumbu has a white patch instead

Other mammals

  • Aardvark (Orycteropus afer) – anteater, constructs large burrows often taken over by other animals
  • Yellow-spotted rock hyrax (Heterohyrax brucei) and Cape hyrax (Procavia capensis) – common rabbit-sized creatures related to elephants, seen in rocky areas
  • African bush elephant (Loxodonta africana) – poached for ivory and decimated to local extinction in some areas, but still common in some national parks, large herds in Kafue, Luangwa, Lower Zambezi
  • Ground pangolin (Manis temminckii) – an anteater, armoured with scales, rolls into a ball when disturbed; fairly common, nocturnal, rarely seen

Reptiles

Snakes

Birds

Molluscs

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zambezi</span> Major river in southern Africa

The Zambezi is the fourth-longest river in Africa, the longest east-flowing river in Africa and the largest flowing into the Indian Ocean from Africa. Its drainage basin covers 1,390,000 km2 (540,000 sq mi), slightly less than half of the Nile's. The 2,574 km (1,599 mi) river rises in Zambia and flows through eastern Angola, along the north-eastern border of Namibia and the northern border of Botswana, then along the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe to Mozambique, where it crosses the country to empty into the Indian Ocean.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lake Bangweulu</span> Lake in Zambia

Bangweulu — 'where the water sky meets the sky' — is one of the world's great wetland systems, comprising Lake Bangweulu, the Bangweulu Swamps and the Bangweulu Flats or floodplain. Situated in the upper Congo River basin in Zambia, the Bangweulu system covers an almost completely flat area roughly the size of Connecticut or East Anglia, at an elevation of 1,140 m straddling Zambia's Luapula Province and Northern Province. It is crucial to the economy and biodiversity of northern Zambia, and to the birdlife of a much larger region, and faces environmental stress and conservation issues.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sitatunga</span> Species of swamp-dwelling antelope

The sitatunga or marshbuck is a swamp-dwelling medium-sized antelope found throughout central Africa, centering on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo, Cameroon, parts of Southern Sudan, Equatorial Guinea, Burundi, Ghana, Botswana, Rwanda, Zambia, Gabon, the Central African Republic, Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya. The sitatunga is mostly confined to swampy and marshy habitats. Here they occur in tall and dense vegetation as well as seasonal swamps, marshy clearings in forests, riparian thickets and mangrove swamps.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lechwe</span> Species of mammal

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kafue River</span> River in Zambia

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Kafue National Park is the largest national park in Zambia, covering an area of about 22,400 km2. It is the second largest national park in Africa and is home to 152 different species of mammals. There are also 515 bird species, 70 reptile species, 58 species of fish and 36 amphibious species.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">South Luangwa National Park</span> National park in Zambia

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kasanka National Park</span> National Park in Zambias Central Province

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lower Zambezi National Park</span> National park in Zambia

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bangweulu Wetlands</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slaty egret</span> Species of bird

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Water transport and the many navigable inland waterways in Zambia have a long tradition of practical use except in parts of the south. Since draught animals such as oxen were not heavily used, water transport was usually the only alternative to going on foot until the 19th century. The history and current importance of Zambian waterways, as well as the types of indigenous boats used, provide information on this important aspect of Zambian economy.

The Kafue Flats are a vast area of swamp, open lagoon and seasonally inundated flood-plain on the Kafue River in the Southern, Central and Lusaka provinces of Zambia. They are a shallow flood plain 240 km (150 mi) long and about 50 km (31 mi) wide, flooded to a depth of less than a meter in the rainy season, and drying out to a clayey black soil in the dry season.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zambezian flooded grasslands</span> Flooded grassland ecoregion in Africa

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The biomes and ecoregions in the ecology of Zambia are described, listed and mapped here, following the World Wildlife Fund's classification scheme for terrestrial ecoregions, and the WWF freshwater ecoregion classification for rivers, lakes and wetlands. Zambia is in the Zambezian region of the Afrotropical biogeographic realm. Three terrestrial biomes are well represented in the country . The distribution of the biomes and ecoregions is governed mainly by the physical environment, especially climate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barotse Floodplain</span> Major floodplain in Central Africa

The Barotse Floodplain, also known as the Bulozi Plain, Lyondo or the Zambezi Floodplain, is one of Africa's great wetlands, on the Zambezi River in the Western Province of Zambia. It is a designated Ramsar site, regarded as being of high conservation value.

Zambia, officially known as the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. The neighbouring countries are the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north, Tanzania to the north-east, Malawi to the east, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Namibia to the south, and Angola to the west. The capital city is Lusaka, located in the southeast of the country. The population is concentrated mainly around the capital and the Copperbelt to the northwest.

References

  1. World Wildlife Fund; Mark McGinley (2007). "Itigi-Sumbu thicket." In: Encyclopedia of Earth. Eds. Cutler J. Cleveland (Washington, D.C.: Environmental Information Coalition, National Council for Science and the Environment). [Published in the Encyclopedia of Earth March 19, 2009; Retrieved November 8, 2007].
  2. Anne Chileshe, 2001: "Forestry Outlook Studies in Africa: Zambia." Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism, Lusaka, and FAO, Rome. (Source for figures is given as Forestry Department, 1992.)
  3. "Comments of the Humane Society of the United States Regarding Proposals by Zimbabwe, Botswana, South Africa, Namibia, Malawi, and Zambia to Transfer Populations of the Afreican Elephant from CITES Appendix I to II" (Humane Society of the United States, January 30, 1992).
  4. Safaris, Discover Africa. "Wildlife in Zambia | Discover Africa Safaris". www.discoverafrica.com. Retrieved 2022-05-27.
  5. Farrows. "African Leopard". World Land Trust. Retrieved 2022-05-27.
  6. Atlas and Red List of the Reptiles of South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland Edited by Michael F. Bates, William R. Branch, Aaron M. Bauer, Marius Burger, Johan Marais, Graham J. Alexander & Marienne S. de Villiers
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