Nature still has some surprises

Amid shrinking migrations, wildlife experts delighted to discover long zebra trek in Africa

A zebra and calf are seen at a watering hole in northern Namibia.
A zebra and calf are seen at a watering hole in northern Namibia.   (AP Photo/HO-World Wildlife Fund International - Martin Harvey)  

Christopher Torchia

At a time when humankind’s encroachment on habitats is increasingly leading species to extinction, scientists have discovered a mass migration of animals in Africa that reaches farther than any other documented on the continent.

The journey made by about 2,000 zebra that travelled between Namibia and Botswana, two countries in a sparsely populated part of southern Africa, was discovered by wildlife experts only after some of the zebras were collared with tracking devices.




The zebra odyssey encompasses a round trip journey of 500 kilometres, starting in floodplains near the Namibia-Botswana border at the beginning of the wet season. It follows a route across the Chobe River and ends at the seasonally full water holes and nutritional grass of Nxai Pan National Park in Botswana. The zebras spend about 10 weeks there before heading back.

Local residents and conservationists knew the zebras left the Chobe River floodplains and returned months later in the dry season, but they didn’t know where the animals went.


“This is the longest known land migration in Africa, in terms of distance between end points,” Naidoo said.

To get the data in a “military-style operation,” researchers fired tranquilizer darts at the zebras from a helicopter, landed and affixed GPS collars, Naidoo said in an interview from Vancouver, where he is an adjunct professor specializing in the environment at the University of British Columbia.


“Even though people have been fascinated by animal migration since the dawn of history, we are just scratching the surface in terms of understanding which animals migrate, where they go, and how they do it,” Wilcove, who was not involved in the research, wrote in an email.

Wildebeest in the Serengeti migration in East Africa meander, possibly covering more ground and certainly migrating in greater numbers than the zebra in Namibia and Botswana. But the southern African zebra move largely in a straight line and the distance between departure and destination points appears to be an average of 10 to 20 kilometres further than in the Serengeti, according to research cited by Naidoo.

Caribou in North America and Asia, Tibetan antelope and Mongolian gazelles are other animals that travel long migration routes. Other seasonal migrations of note include North America’s Monarch butterflies, songbirds in the Americas and humpback whales in the Pacific Ocean.

Tony Sinclair, Naidoo’s fellow academic at UBC and an expert on the Serengeti migration, said the zebra research shows that the animals have to move through “human-dominated lands” and that the migration could be lost if more protective measures are not put in place.

Sinclair wrote in an email that people whose land is traversed by the long migration route may obtain incentives to protect it “with some innovative thinking,” for example by hooking into tourism.

In 2004, a fence that had blocked a zebra migration route since the late 1960s was removed in another part of Botswana. Some 15,000 zebras travelled the re-opened route in 2008-2009, according to research.

Much remains to be learned about the Namibia-Botswana migration. The World Wildlife Fund said long-term research is needed to confirm if the migration is annual and fixed and “whether this is genetically coded or passed behaviourally from mothers to offspring.”



“We all yearn for that, the romance of wild, open spaces,” Chase said. “There are very few places left on our planet where animals and wildlife have the natural ability to roam in the context in which they evolved over thousands of years.”

The Associated Press

Zebra run on a plain in northern Botswana.
Zebra run on a plain in northern Botswana.  (AP PHOTO/HO-WORLD WILDLIFE FUND INTERNATIONAL - MARTIN HARVEY)  
Zebra are seen at a watering hole in northern Namibia.
Zebra are seen at a watering hole in northern Namibia.  (AP PHOTO/HO-WORLD WILDLIFE FUND INTERNATIONAL - MARTIN HARVEY)  
Zebra stampede at a watering hole in northern Namibia.
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