Sankuyo Bush Camp is a new camp in Botswana that I am featuring with a series of blog posts. This is third of the Sankuyo Bush Camp posts that I am posting to the Africa Safari Blog. The great accessibility to predators from Sankuyo Bush Camp is covered in this blog post. For other Sankuyo Bush Camp blog posts, please click on the appropriate link below:
The Sankuyo Area is the home base for the Botswana Predator Conservation Program.
Photo by Bill Given
Sankuyo Bush Camp Offers Exclusive Game Viewing
The Santawani Concession contains only two tourist camps, Sankuyo Bush Camp and Santawani Lodge (8 km apart) that is also operated by the local community, ensuring exclusive game viewing with off road driving and night drives. In addition to the tourist camps the concession has long been the home location of the Botswana Predator Conservation Program that has ongoing research with lions, spotted hyenas, African wild dogs, leopards and cheetah. As a wildlife biologist, I can speak from experience that every researcher wants to set up in a location that has the best proximity to your study subjects so this speaks volumes for the predator density within the concession, it is thought to be some of the best in Botswana.
Sankuyo Bush Camp's Advantageous Proximity to Moremi Game Reserve
The concession borders the famed Moremi Game Reserve, one of the richest wildlife areas on the continent. Wildlife from Moremi extends into the concession but unlike the public area of Moremi you can drive off road to track the predators and then have them all to yourself. Beyond the predators, the Santawni/Sankuyo concession is known to be especially numerous in giraffes, while elephants and other plains game are seen in excellent concentrations.
Anecdotally, I helped plan a familiarization trip for American safari planners who visited the area at the end of July and in their one night stay they found a leopard in a tree consuming a warthog and the next morning found the Santawani Pride of 10 lions feeding on a giraffe that had just been taken down. Another old African hand that visited the concession in April said it had been quite some time since he had seen so much game in one place. I will judge for myself with visits in September and January to be there both during the peak of the dry season as well as the heart of the green season.