Chobe National Park, situated at the Northwest of Botswana, is one of the largest games concentration in all the Africa continent and one of the world's last remaining sizeable wilderness area. By size, this is the third largest park of the country, after the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and the Gemsbok National Park, but definitively the most diverse and spectacular. This is also the country's first national park.
The park is probably best known for its spectacular elephant population: 120'000 elephants today, it is actually the highest elephant concentration of Africa. Moreover, most of them are probably part of the largest continuous surviving elephant population on Earth. The elephant population seems to have solidly built up since 1990, from the few initial thousands. By chance, they have not been affected by the massive illicit exploitation of the 1970's and 1980's. Elephants living here are Kalahari elephants, the largest in size of all known elephant species. Yet they are characterized by rather brittle ivory and short tusks.
Damage caused by the high numbers of elephants is rife in some areas. In fact, concentration is so high throughout Chobe that culls have been considered, but are too controversial and have thus far been rejected.
At dry season, these elephants sojourn in Chobe River and the Linyanti River areas. At rain season, they make a 200-km migration to the Southeast stretch of the park. Their distribution zone however outreaches the park and spreads to northwestern Zimbabwe.