Chapter Meeting - Mar 4

Brian Elliott

Botswana Safari 2013

 

Sierra Club member Brian Elliott will present a slide show on his Botswana wildlife adventure last summer.  The program starts at 7:30 PM, Tuesday, March 4, at the San Bernardino County Museum, 2024 Orange Tree Ln., Redlands.

     Brian and his wife Janice had a 14-day tent camping safari in northern Botswana with an additional three days at Victoria Falls in Zambia. Botswana has some of Africa’s best wildlife viewing and is home to its highest elephant population.

     The Elliotts visited the great salt pan of Naix National Park and Nata Bird Sanctuary, took a boat through the Okavango Delta and spent four days each in the Moremi Game Reserve and Chobe National Park.

     They focused on birding and wildlife observation, seeing hundreds of elephants, 21 lions, and three leopards, some of each no more than 5 feet away. There were many giraffe, wildebeests, warthogs, springboks and more as well. They saw and identified more than 160 species of birds.

     Brian is a former geologist who is now in his 29th of teaching at San Dimas High School. He has organized and led many backpacking trips including several in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge of Alaska and on Baffin Island in Canada. He has rock climbed extensively across North America, Europe, and Australia including big wall ascents of El Capitan and Half Dome in Yosemite. Brian was a member of a Himalayan climbing expedition in the mid-90s with a group of his friends in the Karakorum Mountains in Pakistan.

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