Hattie Ward

Botswana's inspirational women safari guides who are navigating change

A remarkable shift is reshaping the traditional landscape of piloting iconic canoes in one of Africa's most extraordinary places – a role that has long been the domain of men.
In the early morning light, before the blistering Botswana sun reaches full heat, the only sounds are the brushing of traditional mokoro canoes as they slide over the grass and slip gently into the glassy waters of the Okavango Delta. Eager tourists sit poised with cameras and smartphones as their mokoro guides, or "polers" as they are known, expertly cast them off from shore with their lengthy poles pushing deep into the delta's muddy bed. It's a trade that requires a challenging combination of balance and physical strength, as well as in-depth knowledge of wildlife and wilderness survival skills.
Traditionally, this has been considered a man's job, but now a handful of courageous women are challenging stereotypes and steering change in the world of guiding.

I need to set an example to every woman to show that anything is possible as long as you have passion, confidence and love what you are doing
"At first I was nervous," confessed Bontle Cindy Mothogaathobogwe, who has been guiding for three years. "At first, I was thinking, 'What will people say? This is a man's job!' Then something came into my mind that, no, I need to make a change and I need to set an example to every woman to show that anything is possible as long as you have passion, confidence and love what you are doing."

Mothogaathobogwe grew up in the small village of Boro on the southern fringes of the Okavango Delta. Like many polers, she first learnt to steer a mokoro when she was just a child, as this was the only means of transport for her community. And as she takes up the mantle of what male tour guides have been doing for decades, Mothogaathobogwe describes her new career with a sense of pride.
"It is very interesting and special because you act like you are an ambassador of your state, sharing knowledge and culture with the tourists. And also, you tend to use your five senses without any disturbance because it is very quiet."
Mothogaathobogwe's description is spot on. To take a ride on an iconic dugout canoe through the waters of the Okavango Delta is a truly special experience. The delta itself is undoubtedly one of Africa's most extraordinary places – a two-million-hectare river system that's often referred to as the jewel of the Kalahari Desert. It shows up in stark contrast on satellite images as a bright blue-green patch set against the brown desert landscape.
Compared to other high-profile safari destinations, like Kruger National Park in nearby South Africa, humans have had very little impact on the Okavango. The Delta spans a colossal area of substantially undisturbed wetlands and seasonally flooded grasslands, and because of its vast size, access and development is difficult. Tourism to the inner Delta is limited to small, tented camps reached mainly by air.

Mothogaathobogwe is part of the indigenous Bayei tribe from Maun, who live on the outskirts of the Delta and follow a sustainable lifestyle that has long preserved the integrity of the Delta's many different habitats and inhabitants. The Bayei play a vital role in helping to stem poaching and farming threats on this Unesco World Heritage site, helping it sustain and support 264 mammal species, 157 species of reptiles and 540 species of bird as well as the world's largest population of elephants.
For centuries, locals have used mokoro to navigate the waterways. It's a smooth and near-silent ride, along reed and papyrus-lined canals in between larger lagoons, punctuated by water lilies. The poles, known as nkahsi, gently knock on the side of the mokoro, and the faint splashes as they break the surface of the water, along with the hum of insects, are the sounds of this aquatic safari. Today's mekoro (plural for mokoro) boats are made of fibreglass, a more sustainable and eco-friendly alternative to the traditional ebony, mangosteen or sausage tree wood.
As she steers, Mothogaathobogwe scans the water's surface, wary of encountering hippos and crocodiles, all the while explaining the ecosystems we are gliding through. Her trained eye can spot the tiniest of green frogs latched onto a reed. This type of safari is in stark contrast to the typical, bumpy, four-wheeled game drives in search of the big five.
As Mothogaathobogwe picks a water lily and fashions it into a necklace, she reflects on what her life would be like if it weren't for this tourism opportunity.

"In the olden days, it used to be that the women would take the mokoro out and collect grass for building materials. Now it has changed and slowly, slowly, women are getting into the industry; we are taking tourists into the Delta with a mokoro," she said.
Women in the safari industry have historically faced challenges due to the stereotypical belief that guiding is a rugged, outdoor occupation that requires huge amounts of physical strength in the wilderness – not to mention the remote working conditions that take you away from family for long periods of time. These preconceived conditions have always put women at a disadvantage.
But there's now a growing movement in Africa to empower its women. Further north in the Delta, Chobe Game Lodge has a team of all female Batswana safari guides. Safari tour operator African Bush Camps launched a Female Guide Program in 2021. The two-year training accepts five women annually, focusing on skills like driving and animal tracking; last year they had more than 200 applicants. Meanwhile, on the plains of the Serengeti in Tanzania, Asilia Africa's Dunia Camp has been hailed as one of Africa's first all-female run safari camps, employing only women as chefs, guides, managers and housekeepers.
Mothogaathobogwe and her poling colleague Beauty are two of only a handful of female mokoro polers gainfully employed in the African safari industry. They are a part of the Ker and Downey Women Empowerment Scheme, a deliberate move to employ women in traditionally male-dominated roles, such as mokoro polers and mechanics.

"This initiative is part of our broader commitment to challenge stereotypes and promote diversity in the safari industry, reflecting our belief that talent knows no gender boundaries," explained MC Odumetse, group managing director for Chobe Holdings Ltd.
And with the growing employment and empowerment of women in the safari industry, the knock-on effect on local communities is immense – not only leading to improved economic welfare and stability of households, but also the education of children and the overall morale of the community.
"My community are very impressed; [they] are very highly motivated by me. I would say I am their inspiration, and they are learning from me. Whenever I get back there, they are so happy and they say – 'well done Cindy, keep going'," Mothogaathobogwe said.
In an era where narratives of female empowerment resonate globally, Mothogaathobogwe and her comrades have been embraced by solo female travellers looking for a more relatable and authentic experience.

"Some of the tourists, they want to go with a female guide because I think they feel they can relate to me more," she said. "[Up till now], all the guides have been men, and when they hear that there is a female guide here, they are so happy and they say, 'Can we please go with Cindy'."
Like in many other industries, women can provide a different perspective on a safari tour, and Mothogaathobogwe's knowledge of nature is clear. She plucks a flat leafed plant from the delta and explains that this is what's known as a "water shield", turning it over to reveal a gelatinous substance covering the roots and divulging that rubbing this natural jelly on your skin is a local, homegrown remedy for keeping mosquitos at bay.
"It makes me feel very happy," Mothogaathobogwe said. "I love nature and to be able to share the secrets of my homeland and tribal traditions with tourists gives me a great sense of pride as well as peace."

More climate records fall in world's warmest February

Last month was the world's warmest February in modern times, the EU's climate service says, extending the run of monthly records to nine in a row.
Each month since June 2023 has seen new temperature highs for the time of year.
The world's sea surface is at its hottest on record, while Antarctic sea-ice has again reached extreme lows.
Temperatures are still being boosted by the Pacific's El Niño weather event, but human-caused climate change is by far the main driver of the warmth.
"Heat-trapping greenhouse gases are unequivocally the main culprit," stresses Prof Celeste Saulo, Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization.
Carbon dioxide concentrations are at their highest level for at least two million years, according to the UN's climate body, and increased by near-record levels again over the past year.

Those warming gases helped make February 2024 about 1.77C warmer than "pre-industrial" times - before humans started burning large amounts of fossil fuels - according to the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service.
This breaks the previous record, from 2016, by around 0.12C.
These temperatures saw particularly severe heat afflict western Australia, southeast Asia, southern Africa and South America.
The 12-month average now sits at 1.56C above pre-industrial levels - after the first year-long breach of 1.5C warming was confirmed last month.
Back in 2015 in Paris, nearly 200 countries agreed to try to keep the rise in warming under 1.5C, to help avoid some of the worst climate impacts.
That threshold in the Paris agreement is generally accepted to mean a 20-year average - so it hasn't yet been broken - but the relentless string of records illustrates how close the world is getting to doing so.

Oceans and sea-ice under strain
Recent records haven't just been limited to air temperatures. Countless climate metrics are far beyond levels seen in modern times.
One of the most notable is sea surface temperatures. As the graph below shows, the margin of records in recent months has been particularly striking.
Researchers are keen to stress that the scale and extent of the oceanic heat is not simply a consequence of the natural weather event known as El Niño, which was declared in June 2023.
"Ocean surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific clearly reflect El Niño. But sea surface temperatures in other parts of the globe have been persistently and unusually high for the past 10 months," explains Prof Saulo.
"This is worrying and cannot be explained by El Niño alone."
Ocean warming has prompted concerns about the mass bleaching of coral reefs. It also raises global sea-levels and can help to fuel higher intensity hurricanes.

Unusually warm waters may also have been a factor in another exceptional month for Antarctic sea-ice. The three lowest minimum extents in the satellite era have now occurred in the last three years.
Scientists are struggling to explain exactly what's going on.
Until 2017, Antarctic sea-ice had defied predictions that it would shrink, unlike in the Arctic, where the downward trend has been much clearer.
The apparent recent shift - occurring at the same time as other records are being broken around the planet - adds to concerns that Antarctic sea-ice may finally be waking up to climate change.
"I don't think you can say it's coincidental," Prof Martin Siegert, a glaciologist at the University of Exeter, told BBC News.
"It's absolutely frightening. The records are just off [the] scale."

An end to El Niño in sight
There are signs that the run of global temperature records may finally come to an end in the months ahead.
The 2023-24 El Niño has been one of the five strongest such events on record, the World Meteorological Organization announced on Tuesday, but it is gradually weakening.
El Niño will continue to have an effect on temperatures and weather patterns for the next few months.
"We would expect [El Niño] to continue to keep 2024 temperatures elevated at least through the first half of the year," Dr Colin Morice, a senior scientist at the UK's Met Office Hadley Centre, told BBC News.
However, a switch to neutral conditions in the Pacific is likely between April and June, according to US science body NOAA, and a further switch to the cool phase known as La Niña could then happen between June and August.
This would likely put a temporary lid on global air temperatures, with a cooler sea surface in the East Pacific allowing less heat to escape and warm the air.
But as long as human activities keep releasing huge amounts of greenhouse gases, temperatures will continue rising in the long-term, ultimately leading to more records and extreme weather.
"We know what to do - stop burning fossil fuels and replace them with more sustainable, renewable sources of energy," says Dr Friederike Otto, senior lecturer in climate science at Imperial College London.
"Until we do that, extreme weather events intensified by climate change will continue to destroy lives and livelihoods."

Drax: UK power station still burning rare forest wood

A power company that has received £6bn in UK green subsidies has kept burning wood from some of the world's most precious forests, the BBC has found.
Papers obtained by Panorama show Drax took timber from rare forests in Canada it had claimed were "no-go areas".
It comes as the government decides whether to give the firm's Yorkshire site billions more in environmental subsidies funded by energy bill payers.
Drax says its wood pellets are "sustainable and legally harvested".
The Drax Power Station, near Selby in North Yorkshire, is a converted coal plant which burns wood pellets. In 2023, it produced about 5% of the UK's electricity. The site has become a key part of the government's drive to meet its climate targets.
Its owner, Drax, receives money from energy bill payers because the electricity produced from burning pellets is classified as renewable and treated as emission-free.

In fact, the power station emits about 12 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, but under international rules the UK doesn't have to count these emissions.
All of the 6.5 million tonnes of wood pellets burned by Drax each year are produced overseas. Many come from Drax's 17 pellet plants in the US and Canada.
In 2022, Panorama revealed the company had obtained logging licences in the Canadian province of British Columbia and filmed logs being taken from what the programme said was primary forest to a pellet plant owned by Drax.
Primary forests are natural forests that have not been significantly disturbed by human activity.
Following the BBC investigation, Drax denied taking wood from primary forests but said it would not apply for further logging licences in the province.
However, the company still takes whole logs from forests that have been cut down by timber companies.

Panorama has obtained documents from British Columbia's Ministry of Forests that show the company took more than 40,000 tonnes of wood from so-called "old-growth" forests in 2023.
Old-growth is some of the oldest forest which the provincial government says provides "unique habitats, structures and ecological functions".

Google joins mission to map methane from space

Tech giant Google is backing a satellite project due to launch in March which will collect data about methane levels around the world.
The new satellite will orbit 300 miles about the Earth, 15 times per day.
Methane gas is believed by scientists to be a major contributor to global warming, because it traps in heat.
A lot of methane is produced by farming and waste disposal, but the Google project will focus on methane emissions at oil and gas plants.
Firms extracting oil and gas regularly burn or vent methane.
The new project is a collaboration between Google and the Environmental Defense Fund, a non-profit global climate group.

The data captured by the satellite will be processed by the tech giant's artificial intelligence tools and used to generate a methane map aimed at identifying methane leaks on oil and gas infrastructure around the world.
But the firm said if it identified a significant leak it would not specifically notify the company which owned the infrastructure responsible for it.
"Our job is to make information available," it said, adding that governments and regulators would be among those with access to it and it would be for them to force any changes."
There is no international rule on controlling methane emissions. The EU has agreed a set of proposals aimed at reducing them, which includes forcing oil and gas operators to repair leaks. In the coal sector, flaring will be banned in member states from 2025.
Google's map, which will be published on its Earth Engine, will not be in real time, with data sent back from the satellite every few weeks.
In 2017, the European Space Agency launched a similar satellite instrument called Tropomi, which charts the presence of trace gases in the atmosphere, including methane.

It was a mission with a minimum seven-year life span, which means it could end this year.
Carbon Mapper, which uses Tropomi data, released a report in 2022 indicating that the biggest methane plumes were seen in Turkmenistan, Russia and the US - but cloud cover meant the data did not include Canada or China.
Google said it hoped its project would "fill gaps between existing tools".
Despite various tracking efforts, methane levels remain concerningly high.
Nasa says levels of the gas have more than doubled in the last 200 years, and that 60% of it is created by human activity.
A major contributor to that percentage is livestock: specifically cows. Because of the way they digest their food, cow burps and farts contain methane.

In 2020 the US Environmental Protection Agency published a report that said a single cow could produce 154-264 pounds of methane gas every year. It added that there were believed to be about 1.5 billion cows raised for their meat worldwide.
"Satellites are great for finding the really big, massive culprits" of methane emissions, said Peter Thorne, professor of physical geography at Maynooth University in Ireland.
But detecting more diffuse methane sources, such as those emanating from agriculture, is more difficult, he added.

Antarctica mysteries to be mapped by robot plane

A team of scientists and engineers have landed in Antarctica to test a drone that will help experts forecast the impacts of climate change.
The autonomous plane will map areas of the continent that have been out of bounds to researchers.
It has been put to the test in extreme weather around Wales' highest peaks.
Its first experiment will survey the mountains under an ice sheet to predict how quickly the ice could melt and feed into global sea-level rise.
Scientists want to understand Antarctica better but they are limited by the existing technology.
Strong winds, below-freezing temperatures and sudden storms are common. These dangerous conditions, as well as dark winters and the need to transport pilots and large amounts of fuel, put limitations on use of traditional crewed planes.

The British Antarctic Survey developed the new drone with UK company Windracers to be easily repaired if something goes wrong.
The drone was tested in Llanbedr, Eryri (also called Snowdonia) in north Wales - a stand-in for the difficult weather and terrain of Antarctica.
During a practice run in strong winds with rain lashing the airfield, engineer Rebecca Toomey explained that the drone can fly to remote areas without concerns for pilots' safety.
It can carry 100kg of cargo up to 1,000km. Instruments including radar and cameras are loaded in the back of the drone and on its wings. Its route is programmed in and an engineer monitors the flight from a computer.
Rebecca will operate the drone from Rothera base in Antarctica, but eventually the British Antarctic Survey hope to fly it from the UK.
It also uses much less fuel than traditional planes - 10 barrels compared to 200 on one research flight - reducing the environmental impact of scientific research on the planet.

The data it collects will be processed at the British Antarctic Survey headquarters in Cambridge.
Scientist Tom Jordan explains that some of it will feed into a model of the continent called BEDMAP2 that shows the complex shape of the land under the ice.
Drawing a question mark over parts of the map, he explains that large areas of Antarctica are still unmapped because no-one has ever been able to get there.
"You can see the mountain ridge under the ice here and here. Does that continue across? Are parts under sea level? I don't know," he says.
"This survey work is really exciting because it's a proper blank in the map."
Antarctica's vast ice covers huge mountains ranges - some the size of the European Alps - and trenches and valleys. Some areas are below sea level.

It is vital that scientists understand this topography because it determines how quickly the ice will melt.
An ice sheet exposed to warming waters will probably melt more quickly. But if complex mountains block its path, it will decline slower, Tom says.
In its first experiment, radar on the drone will fire radio waves at an ice sheet called Fuchs Piedmont. Some will go into the ice sheet, hit the ground at the base and bounce back. The drone will listen for those reflections and use them to draw the shape of the land.
"It builds up this picture - going line by line. This is another thing that drones are great for - doing things that are really boring," he explains.
Current models of global sea-level rise from melting ice sheets have wide margins, but with a better understanding of Antarctica's topography, Tom says scientists can make more accurate predictions.
"That will help us plan the future," he says.
The first flights will be in the next few weeks. Other experiments include surveys of marine life like krill, which are a vital part of the food chain, and surveys of environmentally sensitive areas.

Amazon's record drought driven by climate change

One of our planet's most vital defences against global warming is itself being ravaged by climate change.
It was the main driver of the Amazon rainforest's worst drought in at least half a century, according to a new study.
Often described as the "lungs of the planet", the Amazon plays a key role in removing warming carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
But rapid deforestation has left it more vulnerable to weather extremes.
While droughts in the Amazon are not uncommon, last year's event was "exceptional", the researchers say.
In October, the Rio Negro - one of the world's largest rivers - reached its lowest recorded level near Manaus in Brazil, surpassing marks going back over 100 years.

As well as being a buffer against climate change, the Amazon is a rich source of biodiversity, containing around 10% of the world's species - with many more yet to be discovered.
The drought has disrupted ecosystems and has directly impacted millions of people who rely on rivers for transport, food and income, with the most vulnerable hit hardest.
One trigger for these dry conditions is El Niño - a natural weather system where sea surface temperatures increase in the East Pacific Ocean. This affects global rainfall patterns, particularly in South America.
But human-caused climate change was the main driver of the extreme drought, according to the World Weather Attribution group, reducing the amount of water in the soil in two main ways.

Firstly, the Amazon is typically receiving less rainfall than it used to between June and November - the drier part of the year - as the climate warms.
Secondly, hotter temperatures mean there's more evaporation from the plants and soils, so they lose more water.

The researchers used weather data and computer simulations to compare drought conditions in two scenarios: one with human-caused warming, and one without.
In a world where humans hadn't heated up the planet by around 1.2C, such an intense 'agricultural drought' - where a lack of rainfall and high evaporation dry out the soils - may only have happened around once every 1,500 years, the study suggests.
Climate change has made a drought of this severity around 30 times more likely, according to the researchers, and one is now expected to happen every 50 years under current conditions.
"This really is something quite exceptional," says Dr Ben Clarke, a researcher with the World Weather Attribution group.
As the map below shows, drought hit almost all of the Amazon basin. This scale - and intensity - makes it different to previous droughts, Dr Clarke told BBC News.
And if warming continues, such extreme droughts could become even more common.

"If we continue burning oil, gas and coal, very soon, we'll reach 2C of warming and we'll see similar Amazon droughts about once every 13 years," says Dr Friederike Otto, a senior lecturer in climate science at Imperial College London.
More frequent and intense droughts test the Amazon's resilience. That has already been stretched by deforestation - around one-fifth of the rainforest has been lost over the last 50 years.
Trees help the area retain and release moisture, fuelling their own clouds, and they also help to cool temperatures.
While the effect of deforestation was not directly tested in this latest study, previous research has shown it increases the vulnerability of the rainforest to drought.
Lungs of the planet
The world's largest rainforest is seen as crucial in the battle to limit global warming.
"The Amazon could make or break our fight against climate change," says Regina Rodrigues, a professor of physical oceanography and climate at the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Brazil.
In a healthy state, it takes up more carbon dioxide (CO2) than it releases.
This limits CO2 increases in the atmosphere from human activities, keeping a lid on temperatures.
But there is evidence that this may be changing, as trees die back due to drought, wildfires and deliberate clearance to make room for agriculture.
There is concern that if climate change and deforestation continue at their current pace, the Amazon could soon reach a "tipping point".
If crossed, this could lead to the rapid and irreversible dieback of the whole rainforest - potentially leading to the region becoming a significant source of CO2 emissions.
It's not known exactly where such a threshold might sit.
"I don't think that [tipping point] is what we are seeing [yet], at least in all but the driest part of the Amazon forest," says Yadvinder Malhi, a professor of ecosystem science at the University of Oxford, who was not involved in the latest study.
Despite the latest record drought, there has been some encouraging progress.
The rate of deforestation fell in 2023 compared with the year before, according to the Brazilian space agency, with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva pledging to halt it completely by 2030.

This - alongside urgent action to slash the greenhouse gas emissions that are fuelling global warming - can still help to protect what's left of the Amazon, researchers say.
"The loss of the Amazon forest is far from inevitable in the short-term," as long as fire and deforestation can be controlled, Prof Malhi told BBC News.
"But we do need to get to grips with stabilising global climate, as the risk increases with every fraction of a degree the planet warms."

UK government plans further nuclear power expansion

The government is exploring plans to build a new large-scale nuclear plant, despite concerns about delays to existing projects.
Ministers say the project would be the biggest expansion of the sector in 70 years, reducing reliance on overseas supply.
The new plant would quadruple energy supplies by 2050, they say.
But concerns have been raised, with existing nuclear projects already behind schedule and over-budget.
The government's Civil Nuclear Roadmap is intended to bolster the UK's energy independence by exploring a new site for another nuclear power station of the size and scale of the £30bn plants under construction at Hinkley Point in Somerset and committed to Sizewell in Suffolk.
Industry sources have told the BBC the leading candidates would include Wylfa on Anglesey or Moorside in Cumbria.

Thursday's announcement also pledged £300m to produce nuclear reactor fuel in the UK, currently only commercially produced in Russia, which it said would lower bills and improve energy security.
But recent nuclear projects have been beset by delays, cost overruns and in the case of Sizewell C, continuing local opposition.
In total, the government has now earmarked more than £1bn for the Sizewell C project, building on its original £700m stake as part of its plan to rapidly expand the UK's nuclear energy sector.
The Association for Renewable Energy and Clean Technology (REA) said all clean energy needed fast-tracking.
Nuclear power currently provides around 15% of the UK's electricity but many of the country's ageing reactors are due to be decommissioned over the next decade.

'Dragging their feet'
Progress can be slow - to get from planning to "power on" can take nearly 20 years. Consultations for Sizewell took 10 years alone.
The majority of construction there is yet to start and strong local opposition to the project remains.
The government will hope to address such problems by streamlining the development of new power stations. By introducing smarter regulation it anticipates it will be able to deliver new nuclear power plants faster.
Jack Abbott, an expert in the clean energy sector, who is also a Labour candidate in the neighbouring constituency to Sizewell, said the government had been "dragging their feet" on nuclear for too long.
"Fourteen years and not one new site opened, despite inheriting 10 approved sites from the last Labour government. Labour supports expanding the UK's nuclear power fleet, which must form a critical part of our future energy mix," Mr Abbott said.
The REA is also sceptical. It said the government had been exploring a new private-led nuclear plant for years. However, the association did commend the government on its plans to commit £300m to produce reactor fuel in the UK.
Policy director Frank Gordon added: "We need to accelerate the deployment of all clean energy sources, especially renewable power from diverse sources, plus supporting the roll-out of the much-needed clean technologies, energy storage working at all scales and duration."

But the government said the plans would also support thousands of jobs, as well as "pushing Putin out of the global market" to provide a quarter of the UK's electricity needs.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said nuclear was the "perfect antidote to the energy challenges facing Britain".
Of the two consultations being published on Thursday one will focus on "a new approach" to siting future nuclear power stations, empowering developers to find suitable locations. The other will lead on encouraging private investment.
"Community engagement will remain critical to any decisions, alongside maintaining robust criteria such as nearby population densities," the government said.
Tom Greatrex, chief executive of the Nuclear Industry Association, welcomed the publication of the roadmap and streamlined regulation but said the UK needed to develop both large and small nuclear generation "at scale and at pace".