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A baby pink elephant was sighted in the African country of Botswana on Friday by a filmmaker for the BBC as he was filming for a wildlife documentary. The cameraman took photographs of the elephant when he noticed it in a herd of around eighty elephants in the Okavango Delta. According to experts, it is most likely an albino, an occurrence that is very rare among African elephants.

"We only saw it for a couple of minutes as the herd crossed the river", said Mike Holding, who spotted the elephant. "This was a really exciting moment for everyone in camp. We knew it was a rare sighting - no-one could believe their eyes."

"I have only come across three references to albino calves, which have occurred in Kruger National Park in South Africa," said ecologist Mike Chase, who is in charge of the Elephants Without Borders conservation charity.

"This is probably the first documented sighting of an albino elephant in northern Botswana. We have been studying elephants in the region for nearly 10 years now, and this is the first documented evidence of an albino calf that I have come across."

The ecologist said that the condition might make it hard for the animal to survive for very long. "What happens to these young albino calves remains a mystery. Surviving this very rare phenomenon is very difficult in the harsh African bush. The glaring sun may cause blindness and skin problems," he noted.

However, he added that it still might be possible for the elephant to survive, as it appears to be adapting to the condition: "Because this elephant calf was sighted in the Okavango Delta, he may have a greater chance of survival. He can seek refuge under the large trees and cake himself in a thick mud, which will protect him from the sun," Dr Chase noted.

"Already the two-to-three-month-old calf seems to be walking in the shade of its mother. This behaviour suggests it is aware of its susceptibility to the harsh African sun, and adapted a unique behaviour to improve its chances of survival."

Pictures of the elephant are on the BBC website here.

Labels: albino, botswana, elephants

PRETORIA- A pact for a new transfrontier game park straddling the borders between Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe was signed on Thursday.

The environment ministers of the three countries endorsed the agreement in Botswana on the dry bed of the Shashe River.

Once proclaimed, the Limpopo-Shashe Transfrontier Conservation Area (TFCA) will cover 4,872 square kilometres, almost a quarter the size of the Kruger National Park.

Centred on the confluence of the Limpopo and Shashe rivers, where the borders of the three states meet, the area is well known for its rich cultural heritage and prolific wildlife.

It includes South Africa's renowned Mapungubwe archaeological site, where excavations in the 1930s uncovered a royal graveyard, including numerous golden artefacts.

Chief among these is a one-horned golden rhinoceros, made of carved wood covered with gold foil. The sculpture was produced by a powerful Iron Age civilisation that established itself on and around the flat-topped sandstone hill about a thousand years ago.

The African people who lived there, from about 1000AD to 1300AD, exchanged ivory and gold with East African traders for glass beads from places as far away as India and Egypt.

Thousands of such beads have been found in the ruins and graves at Mapungubwe, which was declared a World Heritage Site in 2003.

The transfrontier area also contains a large number of elephants, as well as viable populations of lion, leopard and cheetah.

Thursday's signing ceremony included South Africa's Minister of Environment Marthinus van Schalkwyk and his Botswana and Zimbabwean counterparts Kitso Mokaila and Francis Nhema.

Van Schalkwyk said the Limpopo-Shashe TFCA was set to become a "big five" park.

"We will bring in large numbers of the big five [elephants, rhino, lions, buffalo and leopard]. We will play our role in stocking the area with what is needed," he said.

According to a fact sheet handed to journalists at the ceremony, there are close to 2,000 elephants within the TFCA, mostly in Botswana.

The Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism described the proposed TFCA- just over half of which is located in South Africa- as a "complex mosaic of landowners".

It includes, in South Africa, privately owned land as well as land owned by the state and the South African National Parks.

On the Botswana side, the park would include privately owned land, the northern Tuli Game Reserve and cattle and game ranches. The Zimbabwean part would include a mix of communal lands, privately owned stock and game farms, and a government-owned safari area.

Mokaila said the establishment of the TFCA would enhance socio-economic development in the area.

He also jokingly alluded to his country's massive elephant population- estimated at 151,000- saying while South Africa had most of the biodiversity in the region, Botswana had the biomass.

Labels: botswana, great limpopo park, greater limpopo park, transfrontier park, zimbabwe