Beyond the numbers: 23rd Gondwana Canyon Park game count

Last weekend, sixty nature lovers, including guests, Gondwana colleagues and conservation partners, set out into the crisp dawn of Gondwana Canyon Park, clipboards and maps in hand, to take part in the 23rd annual game count in the iconic Fish River Canyon landscape in southern Namibia. 

The game count wasn’t merely about counting antelope or tallying zebra stripes; it was an instrumental exercise in assessing the overall health of the park’s ecosystems across its vast 116,000 hectares.  

Map showing Gondwana Canyon Park game count survey area

Why game counts matter 

Game counts are vital in building long-term datasets that guide conservation management, by answering critical questions:  

• Track wildlife population trends: fluctuations indicate ecosystem health and inform conservationists to potential environmental concerns that could negatively impact wildlife populations. 

• Inform management decisions: data helps determine whether the land’s stocking rate has changed relative to the lands carrying capacity. If game numbers rise too high, overgrazing might follow, leading to soil erosion and degradation.  

• Understand spatial ecology: identifying which habitats species prefer, especially after good rainy seasons, indicate resource availability and provide insight into natural, seasonal resource fluctuations 
  

Game count team ready for a chilly day in Gondwana Canyon Park.

Keep your eyes peeled  

On the surface, a game count may appear as a straightforward exercise in tallying animals, but in reality, it requires vigilance. Teams spread out along eight fixed routes across the park, ensuring sampling accuracy. 

The game count uses a “road strip count” methodology, which entails driving set routes at a constant speed while recording the route’s total distance covered, type of wildlife species seen, its numbers from both sides of the road. Additional details, such as age classes (adult, sub-adult, juvenile), and any unusual sightings, like injuries are also noted. Sightings are recorded on standardised data sheets, which ultimately feed into an online game count database for further analysis.   

Game count participant studies the Monad grid map to confirm the team's location

The moment of truth  

At first glance, this year’s figures might seem concerning. For instance, estimates of Mountain Zebra dropped by 35%, and Ostrich by nearly half compared to 2024. But as Gondwana Collection’s Environmental and Social Impact Manager, Quinton Hartung, explains, this is not necessarily bad news. In fact, it could be a sign of healthy dispersal. 

“We had good rainfall this year, so the animals are well dispersed across the park and even onto neighbouring properties that also received good rainfall,” he said.   

In arid landscapes like southern Namibia, it takes about three good rainfall years for the land to fully recover after drought cycles. After this year’s good rainy season in the park and on surrounding properties, wildlife species can disperse across the landscape as they track resources, like vegetation and water. Thus, lower sightings after good rainy seasons may indicate that wildlife no longer need to cluster around waterholes, especially those inside the Canyon Park.  

Here’s how some of the major species fared: 

The 23rd Canyon Park Game Count reflects Gondwana Collection commitment to scientific nature conservation. Since 2006, we have dedicated nearly two decades to rewilding the park with native game species and have developed park management systems that support both ecological integrity and tourism-led conservation. 

This same ethos guides their work further north of Namibia in the Gondwana Kalahari Park, where years of conservative veld management are paying dividends. 

Thanks to thoughtful land management practices, the Kalahari Park can support increased wildlife populations for the first time in years. Gondwana recently reintroduced 70 Oryx in two phases of a plan to grow the Oryx population by 120 - a number carefully calculated to match what the recovering veld can sustainably support. 

Oryx’s being released in Gondwana Kalahari Park 

Join the Kalahari game count 

If you’re intrigued by the idea of conservation in action, you’re warmly invited to join Gondwana’s Kalahari Game Count from 18th to 20th July 2025 at Kalahari Anib Lodge. For bookings, contact Pandu.S@gcnam.com.