Etosha National Park
Interesting facts
- When proclaimed in 1907 the reserve covered roughly 80,000 km², more than three and a half times the area of today's park.
- The park is home to about 114 mammal species, some 340 bird species, 110 reptiles and 16 amphibians.
- Usually only one fish species lives in the park, but floods can bring in as many as 49 different kinds.
- By 1881 hunting had all but wiped out elephants, rhinos and lions in the region, long before the reserve was created.
- African buffalo and African wild dogs have been gone from the park since the middle of the 20th century.
- Winds sweeping across the dry pan pick up salty dust and carry it far over the surrounding countryside.
- Near the pan, a salt-tolerant grass, Sporobolus salsus, provides protein-rich grazing for the herds.
- Southern white rhinos have been reintroduced to the park after a long absence, alongside its black rhinos.
- Etosha became a national park in 1967, and its own research centre, the Etosha Ecological Institute, opened in 1974.
Why it is worth it
The heart of Etosha is an absence: a vast, flat, white depression of salt and clay, about 130 km long and up to 50 km wide, covering almost a quarter of the park. The name is usually translated from Oshindonga as "great white place". For most of the year the pan is bone-dry and shimmers in the heat; in good rainy seasons it holds a thin sheet of brackish water that draws flamingos and pelicans. Around it lie mopane woodland — some four trees in five in the park — and dolomite hills, across a protected area of more than 22,000 km².
Etosha was proclaimed a game reserve in 1907 under the German colonial governor Friedrich von Lindequist, when its limits reached all the way to the Atlantic coast; it was cut back several times and received its present boundaries in 1970. The fort at Namutoni recalls the colonial past more directly: a German post of 1889 that was destroyed in 1904 by the fighters of King Nehale Mpingana and later rebuilt, it is now one of the park's rest camps. The pan's shore was also home to the Haiǁom people, removed from the park in the 1950s and today recognised as its indigenous inhabitants.
Etosha is among the most important strongholds in the world for the black rhinoceros. Its elephants are counted among the tallest in Africa, though their tusks stay short, probably because of mineral-poor soils. Lions, leopards, cheetahs, black-faced impala and plains zebras gather at the waterholes, and in the far west mountain zebras appear as well. The great show happens after dark: the main camps at Okaukuejo, Halali and Namutoni each have a floodlit waterhole where rhinos in particular come to drink at night in full view of the camp.
Getting there
The main southern entrance, Andersson Gate, is 17 km from Okaukuejo and is approached from Windhoek, about 400 km away, via Outjo; the eastern Von Lindequist Gate lies 8 km from Namutoni, on the road from Tsumeb. In the north-east, King Nehale Gate is reached from Ondangwa, about 100 km from the park, whose Ondangwa Airport (OND) is about 106 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Etosha National Park is a national park in northwestern Namibia and one of the largest national parks in Africa. It was proclaimed a game reserve in March 1907 in Ordinance 88 by the Governor of German South West Africa, Friedrich von Lindequist. It was designated as Wildschutzgebiet in 1958, and was awarded the status of national park in 1967, by an act of parliament of the Republic of South Africa. It spans an area of 22,270 km2 (8,600 sq mi) and was named after the large Etosha pan which is almost entirely within the park. With an area of 4,760 km2 (1,840 sq mi), the Etosha pan covers 23% of the total area of the national park. The area is home to hundreds of species of mammals, birds and reptiles, including several threatened and endangered species such as the black rhinoceros. Sixty-one black rhinoceros were killed during poaching in Namibia during 2022, 46 of which were killed in Etosha.
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