In Namibia, Even Desert-Adapted Species Hammered By Increasingly Extreme Droughts Driven By Global Warming

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Today, Namibia has 86 registered communal conservancies, covering about one-fifth of the country and more than 300,000 community members. Along with national parks and private conservation areas, more than 45% of Namibia’s land — about 37 million hectares (91 million acres), or an area the size of Japan — is under some form of conservation management. And uniquely, Brown points out, Namibia’s entire coastline is protected, from the Orange River in the south, which forms the border with South Africa, to the Kunene River in the north, bordering Angola. Altogether, this protected landscape of more than 25 million hectares (62 million acres) forms the third-largest continuous area of formally managed and protected wildlife land in the world.

Wildlife rebounded. Lions and springboks returned to areas where they hadn’t been seen for decades, and gemsboks, greater kudus (Tragelaphus strepsiceros) and Hartmann’s mountain zebras (Equus zebra hartmannae), among others, bounced back, /Uiseb says. The elephant population in Namibia, he adds, swelled from an estimated 7,000 in the 1990s to 26,000 by 2025. Between 2005 and 2010, conservancies released more than 40 black rhinos, expanding the species’ range by roughly 20%. The free-roaming black rhino population in the northwest went up significantly, says Simson !Uri-≠Khob, CEO of Save the Rhino Trust (SRT) Namibia.

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“We’ve always had dry cycles every 10 or 11 years,” Brown says. “But this one was longer — and much worse.” Extreme weather events like this in Namibia are consistent with climate change predictions, he says, adding that in parts of the northwest, it hardly rained at all. With vegetation dwindling, wildlife numbers in the conservancies dropped dramatically. This was not only due to animals dying from lack of food, Brown says, but also because some animals migrated out of the conservancies, where there was less competition for food by livestock.

But this meant that wildlife survey numbers plummeted in the northwest and Skeleton Coast National Park. Gemsbok numbers plunged from 2,314 in 2011 to just 131 in 2023. Over the same period, springboks decreased from 12,889 to 3,286, and Hartmann’s zebras from 3,361 to 358. !Uri-≠Khob says the black rhino population in the northwest dropped to about half of its size before the drought. “The adults survived. But the cows couldn’t produce enough milk for the calves.” A 2022 survey found 57-60 adult desert lions and 14 cubs, down from a total of 150. With wildlife counts hitting all-time lows, legal hunting permits for conservancies were suspended to protect vulnerable populations, /Uiseb says.

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https://news.mongabay.com/2025/08/climate-change-tests-the-resilience-of-people-and-desert-adapted-wildlife-in-namibia/