Elusive Sitatunga poses in Jao Camp!

Location:   Jao Camp, Jao Concession, Botswana
Date:   6 May 2010
Observers:  Kim Nixon and Martin Kays
Photographer:  Kim Nixon

Imagine our surprise when, straight from our arrival at the airstrip, we arrived at Jao Camp in the late afternoon to spot a sub-adult sitatunga male quietly foraging in the more open areas directly behind the guest rooms! We could not believe our luck and I even managed to get the sequence of adjoining images to prove it!

This enigmatic and highly elusive antelope is a specialist swamp denizen of the Okavango Delta where it usually resides in the quiet backwaters and most remote islands. Even if it is seen it is often only a fleeting glimpse of a startled antelope before it disappears again. The eastern sides of the Jao Concession are one of the best places to see this rare antelope and a study done here in the late 1990s by Jennifer Lalley estimated that as many as 650 sitatunga occurred in the area, with this population multiplying in the peak of the flood season when suitable habitat was available.

Due to the big flood that the Okavango Delta and the Jao Concession is experiencing this year, we are currently enjoying outstanding sightings – just like this - of sitatunga right around camp. It seems that their seasonal movement and feeding patterns are affected by the annual flood regime of the Delta, causing the animals to move out of the reedbeds and onto the flooded grassland on the fringes of the mainland during high water periods.

Apart from the Delta it is also found in undisturbed wetlands of West and Central Africa, but is usually a very rare sighting anywhere. The adult males sport impressive spiral horns and despite weighing up to 60kg they are often perfectly camouflaged in their preferred habitat. Their dark, shaggy coats also make them hard to see.

Although closely related to the more common kudu and bushbuck, the sitatunga spends most of its life in or near water. Sitatunga are highly adapted to living in perennial swamps like the Okavango Delta. Its hooves are splayed and v-shaped to help it move across floating vegetation and if threatened it will even dive into the water to hide.

As the sitatunga is such a specialist antelope its biggest threat is habitat destruction and pristine areas like the Okavango Delta are one of this species’ last strongholds. A sighting of this length of time and at such a close distance was a privilege indeed.