The full field guide

Wildlife in Chobe National Park

Name: Chobe National Park
Address: Botswana

Chobe is an elephant park first, with about 15,400 counted inside its boundary in the 2018 dry season. The riverfront also holds Botswana's only puku, Savuti has lions that hunt young elephants, and zebra from the Chobe floodplain walk south to Nxai Pan with the first rains.

If you only want the answer

Elephants are the sure thing: 99% of trips see them, and herds line the riverfront from about June until the rains. On a three-night stay split between the riverfront and Savuti, lion, buffalo, hippo and zebra are very likely, leopard is a realistic chance, and wild dog and cheetah take luck. Chobe's own specials are the puku, found nowhere else in Botswana, and more than 450 bird species.

What you will see in Chobe: the odds per animal

The grid rates each animal for a typical three-night dry-season stay that splits its time between the riverfront and Savuti. The percentages are the share of trips that saw the animal in Expert Africa's traveller survey, which has run since 2018 across the whole park and does not separate the riverfront from Savuti. The notes on each area are our reading of that survey, the 2018 aerial count and the published habitat studies.

Linyanti figures come from the private concessions next to the park, where night drives and walks are allowed and lift the odds for leopard, wild dog and cheetah. If you camp at the park's own Linyanti campsite, where neither is permitted, shade those three down.

Elephant Guaranteed 99%; riverfront herds May to Nov, Savuti in the dry season
Giraffe Guaranteed 99%; scarce on the riverfront in December
Impala Guaranteed 2,455 in the riverfront strip alone (2018)
Lion Very likely 91%; likely on the riverfront, at Savuti and at Linyanti
Buffalo Very likely 91%; riverfront herds in the dry season, a chance at Savuti
Hippo Very likely 89%; near-certain on a riverfront cruise, a chance at Savuti
Zebra (plains) Very likely 91%; leaves the river for Nxai Pan around December
Puku Very likely Botswana's only population, riverfront floodplain only
Waterbuck Very likely Riverfront; 117 in the river strip (2018)
Leopard Good chance 58%; a chance in all three areas
Red lechwe Good chance A chance on the riverfront, likely at Linyanti
Wildebeest (blue) Good chance 50%; Savuti and Mababe, none on the river strip in 2018
Sable antelope Good chance 48%; 218 in the riverfront strip (2018)
Spotted hyaena Good chance 44%
Roan antelope Good chance 39%; riverfront strip and Nogatsaa
Eland Takes luck 26%; Savuti and Nogatsaa, not the riverfront
Wild dog Takes luck 24%; 50% in the Linyanti concessions
Chobe bushbuck Takes luck About 39 on the park's riverfront (2007 study)
Brown hyaena Takes luck 15%; present, rarely seen
Cheetah Takes luck 14%; Savuti's open marsh grassland is their habitat
Sitatunga Takes luck 6%; Linyanti swamps, outside the park
Gemsbok (oryx) Takes luck Southern Savuti only, about 70 counted in 2018
Springbok Not here Not recorded anywhere in the park in 2018

Bands: guaranteed 95 to 100 percent, very likely 70 to 95, good chance 30 to 70, takes luck 5 to 30, absent means not recorded in the park. Percentages are per-trip sighting rates from Expert Africa's Chobe traveller survey (park-wide, read 4 October 2026); entries without a percentage are our assessment from the 2018 aerial survey and habitat studies. Species silhouettes from PhyloPic (CC0, CC BY and CC BY-SA).

How many elephants are there in Chobe National Park?

It depends on which area a figure covers, and the three numbers in circulation cover three different areas. Inside the park's own survey strata, the July to October 2018 aerial count by Elephants Without Borders and DWNP estimated 15,404 elephants, with a 95% confidence range of 10,789 to 20,020. The same survey put northern Botswana as a whole at 126,114. The KAZA survey of 2022 counted 131,909 in Botswana's part of the transfrontier area, which DWNP rounds to about 132,000 with limits of roughly 120,000 and 144,000.

Only the first of those is the park, and even that is a dry-season snapshot: elephants move between the park, the forest reserves, the Chobe Enclave and Namibia within a single season. The figure of 50,000 that circulates for the park has no survey behind it, and the 126,000 to 132,000 figures describe the whole of northern Botswana, not a national census.

Survey	Area counted	Elephants	95% confidence range
Dry season 2018 (July to October)	Chobe National Park survey strata	15,404	10,789 to 20,020
Dry season 2018 (July to October)	Northern Botswana, 103,662 km²	126,114	116,191 to 136,036
KAZA survey 2022 (September to October)	Botswana's part of KAZA	131,909	about 120,000 to 144,000 (DWNP)
KAZA survey 2022 (August to October)	All five KAZA countries	227,900	±16,743

Sources: Elephants Without Borders and DWNP, 2018 dry-season survey report, Table 5; DWNP CITES non-detriment findings addendum (July 2024); KAZA country figures as published on 31 August 2023.

Where the elephants are, and where the count is heading

On the same survey method the park's count runs downward: 26,609 in 2010, 17,774 in 2014 and 15,404 in 2018. The 2018 report calls the drop since 2014 not statistically significant but the longer trend downward, and lists frequent fires, failing artificial waterholes, dispersal and poaching along the Chobe and Linyanti as possible causes. A 2024 re-analysis of the 2022 data by Elephants Without Borders found the riverfront stratum up by more than 3,000 elephants since 2018 and numbers across northern Botswana stable; that is the organisation's analysis, not a government figure.

Within the park, the 2018 dry season put about 2,556 elephants in the riverfront strip at 2.13 per km², 3,547 in Savute North and 2,813 in Chobe Mababe, which at 4.18 per km² was the densest block inside the boundary. The riverfront spectacle is driven by the drying of inland pans rather than by the river itself: seasonal pans typically hold water into August and the larger ones until November, so the herds build at the Chobe from about May or June and stay until the rains return.

Puku, Chobe bushbuck and the riverfront specials

The Chobe floodplain holds the only puku in Botswana. Peer-reviewed work puts it plainly: in Botswana, puku are restricted to a narrow band of floodplain along the Chobe River. A 2001 to 2003 study found 91% of sightings on the floodplain, numbers well up on the 1960s, calving all year with a peak in March and April, and a population small and isolated enough to count as vulnerable. Puku are not endemic to Chobe, whatever the tourism board's page says: they range widely north of Botswana. No count has been published.

The Chobe bushbuck is the other riverfront special. A capture-recapture study of individually recognisable animals along about 50 km of riverfront inside the park estimated 39 bushbuck (2007 publication). The population was low around 1900, peaked in the 1960s and declined into the 1990s, with no sign of a further fall after 1991.

Red lechwe are common in marshy ground but are a Linyanti animal in numbers: the 2018 survey estimated 53 in the riverfront strip against 1,182 in the Linyanti concession next door. The same survey found 218 sable and 69 roan in the riverfront strip and 92 roan in one Nogatsaa block, small numbers that make both antelope a chance rather than a promise. Waterbuck, 117 in the river strip in 2018, are a riverfront animal too.

The zebra migration from the Chobe to Nxai Pan

Chobe has a genuine migration, and it was only measured recently. Eight adult female zebra collared on the Namibia-Botswana border all crossed the Chobe River in December 2012 and walked due south to Nxai Pan National Park, stayed there for an average of ten weeks, and came back less directly to their dry-season floodplain range. The same southward movement was seen in December 2013. The round trip is 500 km in a straight line, which the study's authors describe as the longest recorded large-mammal migration in Africa.

The Savuti and Mababe grasslands are the reason the route works. Their mineral-rich clay soils, on the floor of an ancient lake, support open grassland that a 2017 study calls critical wet-season range for migratory zebra. The timing you can rely on is the one the collars show: south with the first rains around December, back after the rains. The dates operators give for zebra passing through Savuti, often November to December and March to April, have no primary source behind them. This is a different population from the Okavango-Makgadikgadi zebra migration, which does not pass through Chobe.

Savuti's lions and the elephant hunters

Savuti's lions are in the scientific literature for one reason: in the late dry season, August to November, they switch to hunting elephants. The behaviour became more frequent between 1985 and 2005, and during one study a pride of 30 killed an elephant every three days; seven of the eight elephants killed were between 4 and 11 years old. The researchers link it partly to the zebra migration removing the lions' usual prey and partly to artificial water keeping elephants in the area.

No current lion population figure for the park has been published, and the same goes for leopard, wild dog and cheetah. Treat any number you see for those four with caution.

What people wrongly expect in Chobe

Gemsbok are often written off as absent. They are present in small numbers in southern Savuti, where the 2018 survey estimated about 70 (11 and 59 in two blocks), and nowhere on the riverfront or around the Savuti marsh, so do not plan a sighting. Springbok were not recorded in any of the park's survey blocks in 2018 and are absent for practical purposes. Brown hyaena are present, seen on about 15% of trips.

Night drives and walks are not part of a park visit: the regulations ban both inside Chobe, so the nocturnal species are seen far more often in the Linyanti, Selinda and Kwando concessions outside it. Sitatunga need the Linyanti swamps; the 2018 survey placed its estimate of 5 in the Linyanti concession, not the park. And Pel's fishing owl, sometimes listed as common, is recorded by BirdLife as a single pair at the Kasane rapids, which lie outside the park.

Birds in Chobe: more than 450 species

Botswana Tourism puts the park's list at over 460 species and SafariBookings at more than 450; no checklist-based total has been published, so more than 450 is the safe figure. The park is an Important Bird Area in its own right, and the river is covered by a second one, Linyanti swamp and Chobe river. BirdLife's list of riverine specials includes wattled crane and slaty egret in small numbers, African finfoot, white-crowned and long-toed lapwings, lesser jacana and the bearded scrub-robin, which in Botswana is confined to the far north of the park and the rapids area.

SafariBookings rates November to April as the best months, when Palearctic migrants are present. The riverfront itself is good all year: eight ground counts on the Chobe between 2019 and 2025 found no significant difference in waterbird diversity between the wet and dry seasons. Exact breeding months for the skimmer and the carmine bee-eater colonies on the Chobe are not documented in a primary source, so plan around the season rather than a date.

450+ bird species recorded

African skimmer 10 to 20 pairs breed on the lower Chobe, on sandbanks that surface as the river falls in the second half of the year
Rock pratincole 10 to 20 pairs on the lower Chobe from September to early February, when the river boulders are exposed
Southern carmine bee-eater A spring and early-summer bird on the Chobe, nesting in colonies dug into the riverbanks
Bateleur and lappet-faced vulture BirdLife records some of the highest raptor densities in southern Africa here, with a big passage in November and December and again in March and April
Great white pelican 500 to 700 birds occur regularly on the river outside their breeding season

Where to look in Chobe

Area	Best for
Riverfront, Sedudu Gate to Ngoma	Elephant and buffalo herds from about June to November, puku, waterbuck, hippo and crocodile from a boat, sable on the floodplain edge
Sedudu (Kasikili) Island	Puku and lechwe on the island grass, seen from a cruise boat
Savuti marsh and channel	Lion prides, zebra and wildebeest on the open grassland in the wet season, elephants at the pumped waterholes in the dry season
Chobe Mababe and the Mababe Depression	The densest elephant block in the park in 2018, wildebeest, buffalo herds on the clay plains
Linyanti	Red lechwe in numbers, hippo, and in the concessions next door wild dog and night-drive species
Nogatsaa pans	Roan, eland and elephants at clay-bottomed pans in the remote interior

Survey figures are single dry-season estimates with wide confidence ranges; we use them to show where animals are, not how many there are. No population estimate for lion, leopard, wild dog or cheetah in the park has been published, and we have not supplied one.

Sources

Where to go next

Best Time To Visit Which months put these animals in front of you Things To Do Drives, walks and boats, and what each one shows you Map Where the game circuits actually run