Natural Environment
The floodplain is in the Zambezian flooded grasslands ecoregion, and is bordered by slightly higher sandy ground on which grow dry grasslands (Western Zambezian grasslands) with woodland savanna (Zambezian Baikiaea woodlands) to the east and south, and patches of evergreen forest (Cryptosepalum dry forests) in the north and east.
The flood provides aquatic habitats for fish such as tigerfish and bream, crocodiles, hippopotamus, waterbirds, fish-eating birds, and lechwe, the wading antelope. After the flood, the plain is a habitat for grazing animals such as wildebeest, zebra, tsessebe and small antelope such oribi and steenbok, and their predators. These herbivores have been displaced in most areas by the cattle grazed by the Lozi, but they have provided a large game reserve on the dry grassland to the west, the Liuwa Plain National Park, once the Litunga's hunting grounds, established as a game reserve by Lewanika in the 19th century. In addition the entire western of the Zambezi within the country is a Game Management Area.
Read more about this topic: Barotse Floodplain
Famous quotes containing the words natural and/or environment:
“Men nowhere, east or west, live yet a natural life, round which the vine clings, and which the elm willingly shadows. Man would desecrate it by his touch, and so the beauty of the world remains veiled to him. He needs not only to be spiritualized, but naturalized, on the soil of earth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We learn through experience and experiencing, and no one teaches anyone anything. This is as true for the infant moving from kicking to crawling to walking as it is for the scientist with his equations. If the environment permits it, anyone can learn whatever he chooses to learn; and if the individual permits it, the environment will teach him everything it has to teach.”
—Viola Spolin (b. 1911)