About Namibian Wildlife

The Caprivi Strip refers to that portion of Namibia that juts out to the right at the top of the country when you look at a map. This area will surprise you with its lush forests, large rivers, and abundant grasslands.

These verdant reaches attract large herds of grazing mammals and are also a rewarding destination for those in search of Cape hunting dogs, crocodiles, hippos, and leopards.

Thanks to the abundant greenery, Caprivi Strip is also one of Namibia’s top spots for birders where you could come across carmine bee-eaters, wattled cranes, coppery-tailed coucals, slaty egrets, and racket-tailed rollers during your visit.

You can choose from rustic rest camps and plush hotels when you visit this lovely, atypical part of Namibia.

Etosha National Park, with its huge salt pan visible from space, is Namibia’s best-known wildlife destination. It’s an arid destination, when compared to Caprivi Strip but still home to enormous grazing herds as well as all of the Big Five with the exception of the buffalo.

Due to the transient nature of Etosha’s watercourses, there aren’t any hippos in this park either, but it makes up for these shortcomings with plenty of lions and elephants and one of the only breeding colonies of flamingos in Africa.

Other bird species in this area include ostriches, Monteiro’s hornbills, secretary birds, and 35 different raptor species, including bateleur and tawny eagles.

You can opt to stay within the boundaries of Etosha National Park in one of the comfortable state-run camps or choose from a wide range of accommodation nearby.

Africa’s largest game park, the Namib-Naukluft National park is home to some of the most photographed Namibian landscapes.

Here towering dunes, desert canyons, vast lichen fields, and gravel plains support a range of desert-adapted species and plants. The Welwitschia Mirabilis is one of the most interesting plants found in this area, thanks to its ability to survive for hundreds of years.

You can also expect to spot plenty of camelthorn trees, including the famously fossilized ones at Deadvlei as well as springbok, steenbok, klipspringer, and oryx. Cheetah are known to make an appearance as well as the hardy dassie rats, the only surviving member of the Petromus genus.

Birdlife in the park includes pale chanting goshawks, common waxbills, dune larks, herero chats, and Rüppell’s parrots.

Kaokoland, centred on the Kunene River in North-western Namibia, is one of the country’s most sparsely populated and undisturbed places.

It’s most famous for its population of desert-adapted elephants, rhinos, and lions, but you might come across other species among these mopane savannahs and mountains.

These include cheetah, leopard, giraffe, hyena, and hippo as well as birds like African harrier hawks, Rufous-crowned rollers, giant kingfishers, and scarlet-chested sunbirds.

Damaraland’s flat-topped mountains, barren plains and petrified forests, are another place where desert-adapted large mammals roam free.

You might also catch sight of giraffe, leopard, zebra, ostrich, hyena, cheetah, and antelope during a trip to Damaraland. The black-faced impala, endemic to Namibia, is another safari highlight in this area.

Bird species include near endemics like Hartlaub’s francolins, violet wood-hoopoes, rockrunners, bare-cheeked babblers, Rüppell’s parrots, and white-tailed shrikes.

No trip to Namibia is complete without exploring this vast ravaged coastline, littered with the wreckages of ships.

This is where you might encounter desert-adapted lion, black rhino, and elephants, as well as hyenas, armour-plated lizards and Nile soft-shelled turtles. You can also catch up with the colony of fur seals at Cape Cross in the northern reaches of this fascinating stretch.

The seal colony also attracts numbers of jaegers, skuas, black crakes, Egyptian geese, Cape gannets, black bustards, great white pelicans, and more.