Scott Ramsay visited Nkasa Linyanti in April 2026 to witness the positive impact that regenerative tourism can have on a critical conservation area.
We were alone with three big male lions. All of them had massive manes, extending down their stomachs. As I photographed them I could see the dark pupils of their eyes were wide open, black marbles of serious intent.
The males weren’t interested in us, however. They walked straight past us, like entitled kings, padding the Kalahari sands with their ginormous paws. My guide Simon Swenyeho knew where they were going.
“They’re on their way to the ladies,” he laughed. “Typical men.” As I was to discover, the presence of lions in this forgotten part of Namibia was not to be taken for granted. “We’re so happy they are back,” said Simon.
I was in Nkasa Rupara National Park, in the Zambezi Region of north-east Namibia, once known as the Caprivi Strip. Stretching for 450kms, this long finger of land squeezed between Botswana, Angola and Zambia is a colonial vestige from the 1890s that ensured the German occupiers had access to the Zambezi river.
Look on a map, follow the Kwando River south to where it turns north – and changes its name to the Linyanti. Here you’ll find a national park that takes its name from two islands – Nkasa and Rupara – which are surrounded by floodplains that fill with water in peak rainy season.
Just across the border to the south is “the Linyanti” of Botswana, an area revered by wildlife connoisseurs. Considered no less spectacular than the larger Okavango Delta, the Linyanti’s floodplains draw thousands of red lechwe, hundreds of elephants and buffalo – and some very handsome lions.
The Botswanan safari camps in the Linyanti have become world renowned: King’s Pool, Duma Tau and Savuti Camp are famous for epic wildlife sightings. For me, this wild part of Botswana and the adjacent Savuti Marsh was emblazoned into my memory when, as a kid, I watched Eternal Enemies, a visceral documentary featuring warring lions and spotted hyenas.
Yet contrary to common perception, much of the Linyanti floodplain doesn’t lie in Botswana, but in Namibia’s Nkasa Rupara. Few people know about this 320 square kilometre park, and even fewer have travelled there. The reason is simple.
“The area had been poached out,” said Colin Bell, co-founder of Natural Selection, which is setting up a brand-new camp called Nkasa Linyanti on Nkasa Island in partnership with the local community and safari experts Brent and Chantelle Cook. “The Botswana side was well protected, but the Namibian side of Linyanti had been wiped out.”
The Caprivi has endured decades of conflict. During the Border War from 1975 to 1988, soldiers would shoot wild animals – including lions. Conservationist Map Ives once told me how in the mid 1980s he canoed across the Linyanti River border to speak to the South African army, to plead with them to stop hunting the big cats.
In 1990, peace came with Namibian independence, but between 1998 and 2002 a secessionist movement tried – unsuccessfully – to break away from Windhoek’s central government. The Basubia and Mafwe people here are closely linked to the Lozi people of the Barotse floodplains of Zambia, while the Bayei and Mbukushu are the famed “river people” of the Linyanti, Okavango, Kwando and Chobe Rivers.
No surprise, then, that these people consider themselves geographically – and culturally – distinct from the desert cultures of Namibia. With some of the biggest rivers in Africa, lush grasslands and tall riverine trees, the Zambezi region does feel like a different country.
After decades of wars and conflict, local villagers were left destitute. To feed themselves, and make some money, they set hundreds of wire snares across the landscape. The nearby village of Sangwali was considered a hotspot for poachers.
The Zambezi region of Namibia – as the Caprivi is now called – was and remains one of the poorest in Southern Africa. The sandy Kalahari soils and variable rainfall make it difficult to grow crops, so farmers keep cattle and goats. But with lions roaming around, conflict between predators and livestock is inevitable.
Between 2012 and 2014, lions killed almost 200 cattle, most of them in the three community conservancies of Balyerwa, Wuparo and Dzoti, immediately north of Nkasa Rupara. In retaliation, frustrated locals shot most of the lions. The largest pride lost 12 lions, and numbered just three by the end of 2014.
If a lion did survive the snares and gunshots of angry locals, some of the biggest cats were shot for trophies in the adjacent hunting concessions. Despite the devastation, Colin was always hopeful. When he was in northern Botswana, he would look across the river onto the floodplains of Nkasa Rupara, dreaming of a renewed wilderness.
“We knew from years of experience that wildlife does recover, especially if there’s great geography, great soils and great water,” said Colin. “All we had to do was make sure poaching stopped, and for that to happen people needed to earn a decent living from tourism.”
Colin was especially keen on Nkasa Rupara National Park, because it lies at the heart of KAZA, the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area, a massive 500 000 square kilometre landscape that is home to most of Southern Africa’s elephants.
Numbering about 220 000, KAZA’s elephant population is the biggest on the continent. Nkasa Rupara is a critical corridor for thousands of elephants that move between northern Botswana and the huge mopane forests of southern Zambia and Angola.
Natural Selection approached the communities in 2015, and they were immediately interested in working together. An agreement was reached: if Natural Selection built a camp, paid concession fees, and employed local people at the lodge, the poaching would stop.“And that’s what happened,” Colin said. “We’ve seen it time and time again. The wildlife does bounce back.”
In 2016, Natural Selection signed the official agreement with the three communities who own the land of Nkasa Rupara (in Namibia, many parks are owned by communities but managed by government rangers). The contract allowed for a single camp at the southern end of Nkasa Island, near the Linyanti River, an ideal area for the best safari experience.
Something’s cooking in Nkasa
Brent and Chantelle Cook had long been interested in establishing a camp in the area, and a partnership with the communities and Natural Selection presented the opportunity they had been waiting for.
In 2019, Brent and Chantelle Cook rented a 4×4 and went to camp on their own on Nkasa Island for a few weeks. At sunset one evening, a big bull elephant walked right up to Brent and Chantelle.“It was as if the elephant was giving us his approval,” said Brent. “So being the dreamers that we are, we went for it. The incredible beauty and raw landscape captivated us and we knew straight away that we wanted to help look after this important wilderness.”
An initial plan was to set up a number of camera traps to get a base line study of what species inhabited Nkasa Island.“Besides the usual suspects, sadly we only recorded one lioness over an entire year,” lamented Brent, after reviewing months of photos and video. But he remembered Colin’s advice to remain “patient and present”, and so Brent and Chantelle remained hopeful that the wildlife would indeed bounce back.
By then they had employed Simon, a safari operations expert, who was born and grew up in in the village of Lianshulu, about 38 kilometres from Nkasa Rupara. His father Benson had worked for most of his adult life in Nkasa Rupara National Park, which was then known as Mamili.
Then Covid halted all plans for the camp, but the payments of lease fees to the communities continued. Once normality returned around 2022, Brent returned to Nkasa, looking for the ideal spot to build his camp.
He spent days driving and exploring the island alone, and was overjoyed to see there had been a noticeable increase in wildlife since his visit in 2019. Large herds of buffalo, lechwe and impala were grazing on the floodplains. Even small pockets of zebra were back, after years of absence.
The paying of the lease fees to the neighbouring communities was working. The camera traps also picked up several leopards, including a mating pair. But the biggest reward was the lions. They were back! Multiple individuals were recorded on different parts of the island.
“They were reclaiming their home,” explained Brent. “Initially, whenever we saw a lion, they would run away at the sight of the vehicle, but soon they settled and provided incredible viewing,” explained Brent. Elephant herds seemed more relaxed too, having calmed down after years of war and harassment. “The wildlife was starting to trust humans again. We saw that Nkasa was starting to regain its sense of harmony.”
Brent is a stalwart of rhino conservation in his home province of Eastern Cape in South Africa, and his heart is set on helping to restore Nkasa Rupara National Park.“Our camp here is all about conservation. We want to ensure we create a tourism presence that makes a real difference to wildlife and locals. That’s the only way that Nkasa’s wildlife is going to survive in the future.”
Natural Selection will pay an annual lease fee to each of the three communities, as “rental” for their traditional land. Additionally, the company pays eight percent of gross revenues and will charge a small fee to every safari visitor. This “conservation, community and reserve” fee will help fund infrastructure and services in villages like Sangwali. Most job positions will be filled by local people.
Nkasa Linyanti camp will also donate an additional 1,5% of every visitor’s stay to Natural Selection’s non-profit foundation. An independent board of trustees will donate these funds to reputable conservation and community projects in and around Nkasa Rupara.
Hanging with the pride
While I was at Nkasa Rupara, Brent and Chantelle were working hard with builders to finish the new camp, in time for the first guests that were due to arrive soon. Late rains had delayed the schedule, so it was all hands on deck.
The now-opened camp – the only one on Nkasa – has just six tents, sleeping 12 people. The traditional tented rooms with en-suite bathrooms and outdoor showers are comfortable and roomy, without excessive luxury.
“It’s not over-the-top,” Chantelle explained. “We’d like to attract visitors who want to be here primarily to experience the Linyanti.” Their daughter Cate was also helping out, but she couldn’t resist the allure of the lions. And neither could Simon and I. Every morning for a few days we headed out to find them.
And it was the Linyanti’s lions that we were looking for. We soon found them. The lionesses had killed an impala, perhaps half an hour before. Remarkably, the lionesses seemed to be letting the cubs feed first. Two of the males appeared, probably attracted by the scent of fresh blood. In a flash, the lionesses were snarling and lashing out at the throats of the big boys, clearly warning them not to get too close. These were protective moms, doing their best to ensure their cubs survived. The males backed off sheepishly, and went to lie in the shade of some fever berry bushes.
“Because the lions on Nkasa were shot out,” said Simon, “we think these ones may have come across from Botswana. They probably swam across the river during the drought of 2024.” These lions certainly looked like those I had seen in old wildlife documentaries from Botswana. They were healthy, strong and strutted around with regal authority. “They own this land now,” Simon quipped.
Cate, Simon and I spent five days alone with the lions. Nkasa Linyanti is the only camp on the island, so guests are assured of exclusivity. And because Namibia’s operating costs are lower than Botswana’s, Natural Selection can charge a nightly rate for visitors that is considerably less than camps across the border.
On my last morning, I had to leave the park early to catch a plane home. The grass was covered in dew, backlit by a shimmering sunrise. We drove through a dip in the road and in the shadows was a young male leopard, walking towards us.
As he saw us, he ducked off the road into thick grass. Both Simon and I scrambled for our cameras to get a photo of the camouflaged cat. He stared at us for a few brief moments before slipping out of sight. “That’s a new leopard!” Simon said, as we caught our breaths again and drove into the sunrise. “We haven’t seen him before. It’s so good to know he’s here.”
Author and Photographer: Scott Ramsay
Scott is the author of Spirit of Africa and South Africa’s Wildest Places.
CLICK HERE to learn more about Nkasa Linyanti camp.