National Geographic USA 08.2021

a catering company that served the likes of Mar- It’s not just
tin Luther King, Jr., and boxing champion Joe about handing
Louis. She used some profits from her business out food boxes:
to push for better living conditions for African Attacking food
Americans in Texas. insecurity
also means
Williams says Smith’s spirit guides him. “The reducing waste
roots of her business are the exact same for this,” and promoting
he says. “She saw a definitive need in our com- nutritious
munity … and she knew that she was uniquely foods.
positioned to make a difference in the commu-
nity through the medium of food.” Responding to the pandemic
The amount of food distributed
Lucille’s 1913 now serves daily meals to up to last year by Feeding America could
800 seniors, plus 150 students and 28 teachers provide every U.S. resident with
and administrators at a school adjoining the three meals a day for more than six
nonprofit’s kitchen. But the mission of Lucille’s days. Its food banks served 44 percent
1913 extends far beyond giving out meals. more meals in 2020 than in 2019.
Meals distributed by
Williams says he grew up with plenty but Feeding America
had friends who had very little on their kitchen 6 billion
tables. He sees lots of check-cashing stores and
fast-food restaurants, but few markets with a 4
variety of fresh produce.
2
So he’s tackling the issue of food security
from the ground up. Besides preparing meals, 2010
Lucille’s 1913 will take stewardship of 74 acres 2015
in two Houston-area counties, Harris and Fort 2020
Bend. The land will be used for growing fresh
produce and providing employment opportu- SOURCE: FEEDING AMERICA
nities through the culinary arts. Williams also
plans to open two markets in those areas to sell
produce and locally made products. People hired
from those neighborhoods will learn farming or
entrepreneurial skills while helping to feed peo-
ple in their communities.

Detroit, MI: Feed people, reduce waste

FROM THE BACK LOT of Jefferson Avenue
Presbyterian Church you see both Indian Vil-
lage, an upscale community of stately mansions
directly behind the historic structure, and—one
block over—a poorer community of vacant lots
and modest homes that have seen better days.
People line up for food, but not just boxes of
canned goods and produce as is typical at many
food giveaways. They get free meals, enough
to feed a family of four to six, prepared in the
church kitchen that is called the Upcycling
Kitchen because the chefs turn food that oth-
erwise would be garbage into gourmet cuisine.

The meals are an initiative of the nonprofit
Make Food Not Waste, an organization ded-
icated to improving the climate and the city’s
food security by reducing food waste. By showing

105



st. paul, Minn.

Aid for
those in
homeless
camps

Michelle Vue carries
bags of food, delivered
by volunteers from the
nonprofit organization
Involve MN, back to
the forest encampment
where she, her partner,
and others live in
St. Paul. Vue moved
to Minnesota from
Mississippi in February
2020 and stayed with
a friend in Minneapolis
until he was evicted
from his home in July.
Vue and others in
the camp are ethnic
Hmong and have
endured racist abuse
from people who
fear they’ll spread
COVID-19.

DAVID GUTTENFELDER

The National
Geographic Society,
committed to illuminat-
ing and protecting
the wonder of our world,
has funded Explorer
David Guttenfelder’s
storytelling about
the human condition
since 2014.

ILLUSTRATION BY JOE MCKENDRY

A M E R I C A’ S H U N G E R C R I S I S 107

st. paul, Minn. A volunteer with encampments scat-
Involve MN distributes tered throughout the
Surviving Thanksgiving meals Twin Cities area. The
in tent city at a homeless encamp- pandemic added more
ment in St. Paul. The than 100,000 food-
group was started in insecure people in the
2019 by Grant Snyder, state in 2020.
a Minneapolis police
officer, and his wife, The Minnesota
Melanie, to serve the Central Kitchen, an ini-
homeless and vulnera- tiative of the Second
ble. Minnesota, which Harvest Heartland
boasts 16 Fortune hunger-relief network,
500 companies, has provides free meals at
dozens of homeless more than 50 sites in
the Twin Cities metro

region. Through people what can be done with the rescued food it
partnerships with MCK, receives, the group began an effort that it believes
furloughed chefs are can save people money and help save the planet.
paid to make meals for
the hungry. The organi- Attacking food insecurity means more than
zation has served giving away boxes; it requires systemic changes,
1.5 million meals since says chef Phil Jones, a force behind Make Food
March 2020. Eleven Not Waste. “There’s so much more good that can
kitchens and catering be done for people and the planet,” says Jones,
companies participate who also started a company called Farmacy
in the program, which Food. It offers freshly prepared, appealing, and
has saved 200 jobs nutritious dishes at low cost. Its goal is to show
and rescued 1.6 million people, especially those living in low-income
pounds of surplus food. neighborhoods, that you can get fast food that’s
good for your budget and your belly.
DAVID GUTTENFELDER
Make Food Not Waste gets surplus food from
grocers, vendors, and other local businesses.
Meals are prepared weekly for about a thousand
area residents. The group also hopes to teach
them more about improving health one forkful
at a time. “We’re encouraging people to try new
flavors and eat more fruits and vegetables,” says
Danielle Todd, founder and executive director of
Make Food Not Waste. “You can get cheap food,
something just to fill the body up, but it doesn’t
fuel the body with the right things.”

The Upcycling Kitchen aligns with her
upbringing in New Orleans, Louisiana, chef
Ederique Goudia says. “We were raised to treat
everyone like family. This is a way I can use my
skills, and do it in a way that’s dignified. Driving
up for a meal is like picking up catering from
your favorite chef or restaurant.”

The arrangement also challenges the chefs
to be creative, because they never know what
ingredients they’ll have to make culinary magic.
“It’s fun to see what I get, then think about what
can I create,” Goudia says. “The other day I got
a huge amount of broccoli and created broccoli
pesto over spaghetti, so people got to see broc-
coli prepared in a way that if you tasted it, you
wouldn’t even know it was broccoli.”

Marvin Dixon, 52, a single father with two
teenagers, says the food has been a blessing. He
lives off Social Security because of an injury, but
gets enough aid only for himself since he doesn’t
have legal custody of his children, though they
live with him. “The food from the church helps
tremendously,” he says. “I don’t have to buy
extra food with the little money I do have. And,
you know, these teenagers, they can eat.” j

Cassandra Spratling, a Detroit Free Press veteran,
has written for National Geographic about family
issues and the toll COVID-19 has taken on Detroit.

A M E R I C A’ S H U N G E R C R I S I S 109

ON THE KALAHARI’S PARCHED LANDSCAPE,

rising heat A N D crippling droughts
C O U L D T H R E AT E N A D E L I C AT E balance of life.

The Edge of Sur

BY LEONIE JOUBERT
P H OTO G R A P H S B Y T H O M A S P. P E S C H A K

vival

111

Massive bird nests
made by sociable weav-
ers in camel thorn trees
may be decades old,
sheltering generations
through the Kalahari’s
extremes. Hungry Cape
cobras and boomslange
often enter the cham-
bered nests looking for
chicks to eat.

PREVIOUS PHOTO

For meerkats—a kind
of mongoose—survival
is a group effort.
Sentries scan for dan-
ger, and lower-ranked
adults, mostly females,
feed and mind the
senior female’s pups.
It’s not clear how cli-
mate change will affect
meerkats here, but hot-
ter, drier summers may
reduce their numbers.



In Tswalu Kalahari
Reserve, South Africa’s
largest private reserve,
lions in one section
keep giraffes and
grazing animals such
as antelope moving.
This eases strain
on grasses, which in
times of more heat and
less rain could give
way to inhospitable
thorny thickets.



Researchers Wendy
Panaino (at left) and
Valery Phakoago search

a hole dug by an
aardvark to analyze
the nutritional value
of the insects these
shy, nocturnal animals
eat. Understanding the
Kalahari’s food chain
helps Tswalu’s manag-
ers find the sweet spot

for the number of
animals the reserve

can support.

Twin silhouettes The National
are motionless in Geographic Society,
the night. Above, a
silver-veiled moon committed to illuminat-
hints of a sky. ing and protecting
Below, Earth is a the wonder of our world,
darkened disk. has funded Explorer
Thomas P. Peschak’s
SOUND GIVES THE NIGHT DEP TH: Common storytelling around
barking geckos rattle like castanets in reced- biodiversity since 2017.
ing waves into the shadows. The two women
have been seated on a shallow dune for hours ILLUSTRATION BY JOE MCKENDRY
in hushed anticipation. One unfolds her legs,
stretches, crosses them at the ankles. The other
rocks, as if uttering a prayer mantra, limber-
ing her muscles. Their radio-tracking gear
drew them at sunset to this spot in the south-
ern part of the Kalahari, which has long been
called a desert but has characteristics of a dry
savanna ecosystem.

Somewhere below them in a warren of bur-
rows is a ground pangolin they’ve been moni-
toring for two months. She’s late to rouse—it’s
10 p.m.—which might have something to do

116 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

with the day’s withering heat. of the interconnectedness of living things in the
For the purpose of recordkeeping, she’s called dry African savanna, all of which starts with the
summer rains, usually from November to March.
Hopewell 3, after the place where local trackers
first found her and doctoral researchers Wendy Their research, through the University of the
Panaino, 28, and Valery Phakoago, 30, tracked Witwatersrand’s Wildlife Conservation Physi-
her by following her spoor in the sand. Now ology lab in Johannesburg, is part of a bigger
they follow her by reading the bleep-bleep- study called the Kalahari Endangered Ecosys-
bleep of radio waves sent by a device fixed to a tem Project (KEEP) that aims to understand
scale on her rump. how climate disruptions will tug on the delicate
fabric of life here.
Tonight the researchers are on a quest for
pangolin dung—“Kalahari gold,” they call it— This part of the Kalahari is already red-flagged
the source of a trove of information about how as a climate hot spot. Modeling by climate sci-
this shy, ant- and termite-eating animal’s life entists at the University of Cape Town suggests
is interwoven with grasses and the tiny insects that within a decade, when the global tempera-
that reap their seeds and eat them. It’s another ture could exceed the rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius
important thread in scientists’ understanding (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) that the UN’s Paris

T H E E D G E O F S U R V I VA L 117

AFRICA

NAMIBIA BOTSWANA

KALAHARI
DESERT

SOUTH
AFRICA

Agreement seeks to avoid, average tempera- about the secretive lives of creatures out here
tures in Botswana—just north of Hopewell 3’s on the dunes will give conservation managers
foraging grounds—will already have warmed emergency signals to help them better protect
by nearly four degrees F. Beyond 5.4 degrees F this vestige of the Kalahari.
in average warming globally, which would mean
7.6 degrees F here, the science points to system H OPEWELL 3 is the third pangolin found for
collapse for the Kalahari. the study on what was formerly Hopewell
Farm, one of 50 reclaimed cattle ranches
A recent study of the pangolin’s termite- that have been absorbed into Tswalu Kala-
eating dune neighbor, the aardvark, during a hari Reserve, established nearly 30 years
drought in the summer of 2012-13, gives dis- ago. At 294,000 acres, Tswalu is South Africa’s
tressing clues as to what climate change could largest private game reserve, a remnant of the
mean for life here: If the rains fail, a cascade of once wild Kalahari that has been carved up by
disasters may unfold, starting with the wither- farms, roads, and iron ore and manganese mines.
ing of the grasses, a crash in numbers of ants
and termites that feed on them, and hunger— Aside from its luxury private lodgings for
or starvation—for anything that depends on game-watchers, the reserve hosts the KEEP
those insects for nourishment. If the failure of research hub, managed by the Tswalu Founda-
the annual greening means disaster for these tion, which connects the work of scientists inter-
two insect-eaters during a drought spell, what ested in semiarid ecologies. Their efforts focus
would a longer-term system collapse driven by on a central question: How will this hot, dry
searing temperatures and crippling droughts place respond to rising (Continued on page 130)
mean for the many different threads of life that
are entangled in a food chain that draws vitality
from the grasses?

The Kalahari is the world’s largest expanse of
unbroken sand, a rolling ocean of windblown
dunes across Botswana, Namibia, South Africa,
and beyond that are topped with savanna, a
mostly grassy landscape dotted with occasional
trees. Here on the region’s southern edge, air
currents have swept up a series of north-south–
running dunes lapping against the flanks of
bare, quartzite hills that rise like whalebacks
from the deep.

Decades of farming have thrown the region
into disarray, and now it seems that the freight-
train effects of planetary heating are bearing
down too. What Panaino and Phakoago learn

118 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C NGM MAPS

LEFT

Homebuilders enable
collective survival
in the harsh Kalahari.
Sociable weavers share
their nests with African
pygmy falcons, skinks,
and foraging snakes.
Aardvarks are prolific
burrowers that exca-
vate underground
chambers also used
by jackals, porcupines,
wild cats, warthogs,
ground squirrels, and
swallows, among others.

BELOW

How to revive a snake:
After a surgical pro-
cedure to implant a
tracking device in this
Cape cobra, veter-
inarian Jessica Briner
delivers a puff of
carbon dioxide to
flush its lungs of anes-
thetic and restore
normal breathing.

T H E E D G E O F S U R V I VA L 119



In spring 2020 a clan of A years-long drought
spotted hyenas arrives broke in late 2020,
at Tswalu. Reintroduc- turning Tswalu’s other-
ing predators is key to wise ruddy dunes (seen
keeping this managed here) green and lush
wilderness in balance. (opposite). The Kala-
Established in the 1990s, hari is already warming
the reserve is a remnant at a much faster rate
island of the natural than the global aver-
Kalahari, which has been age, and many climate
carved up by farms, models also project
roads, and iron ore and drier conditions,
manganese mines. especially in summer.

PROTECTIVE SPACE SURVIVING THE STRESSORS

Camel thorn trees provide relief from the sun. Under- Some animals seek refuge to insulate themselves
ground tunnels teem with mammals, reptiles, and insects
evading the heat of the day and chill of the night. against temperature swings. Others endure through 1 STAYING STABLE
physical adaptations such as improved fluid retention.

Weaver colonies, Sociable weaver Ostrich Muscles Large volumes of air cool
with as many Philetairus socius pump air blood vessels between
as 250 nesting into the the mouth and lungs,
chambers, can Older or breeding birds com- mouth through evaporation. The
last 100 years. mandeer the most interior, skin also releases heat.
insulated chambers of these
Woven temperature-controlling nests. Struthio camelus 2 Heat exchange Air sac
grass with blood near skin
Ostriches can maintain a stable vessels
internal body temperature of 102°F Heat
for hours, even when the ambient

91° temperature rises over 120°F.

Skin 4

Lung

Chamber Continuous 3
94° one-way airflow
through the air

sacs and lungs

Membrane

99°F For digging, Air sac
Exterior meerkats have
temperature Nest membranes
entrance that protect
Wildebeest their eyes,
ears that close They stand with
tight, and four- their bellies facing
fingered claws. the sun to absorb
morning heat.

African pygmy falcon Strong back Chicks find
Polihierax semitorquatus muscles and cooling shade
a tail make under adults.
These birds occupy the weaver a tripod for
nests’ shallower, outer cham- standing sen-
bers, where they also prey on try and vertical
weaver chicks and lizards. sunbathing.

Cooler under Exterior

the tail 113°

Kalahari lion

102°

Without much standing water to drink, animals in the
region mainly rely on food to prevent dehydration.

Vegetation Fruit Insects Animals

Need to Every few Whenever
drink water: months available

Shelter aboveground Belowground 77° Extra molars
Temperature
Meerkat Bat-eared fox Cape ground squirrel
Suricata suricatta Xerus inauris
Otocyon megalotis
Borrowing ground squirrel bur- A large, fluffy tail works as
Adapting to extremes rows to beat the heat, meerkats This insectivore has specialized a parasol, allowing squirrels
emerge to get food in the muscles for efficient chewing more time to find cucumbers,
morning and late afternoon. and ears that can pinpoint under- seeds, and other sustenance.
ground prey such as termites.

The sandy soils of the southern Kalahari hold only trace WET 99° DRY TOO HOT FOR A HABITAT? RICA Climate regions RICA
amounts of water and nutrients that can support life. SEASON 89° SEASON F F
Animals living in this harsh environment—which sees 83° The Kalahari is expected to get A KALAHARI Arid Desert A KALAHARI
extreme daily temperature swings—have adapted Future 76° 73° hotter, and possibly drier, by Steppe
to the demands on their bodies in resourceful ways. 2100. More frequent extreme DESERT DESERT
Present 67° 55° heat could make it too hot for Temperate No dry season
47° many animals and plants. Present Dry winter Future
ANNUAL AVG. (1980–2016) Dry summer (2071–2100)
HIGHS AND LOWS DATA ARE RCP 8.5 WORST-CASE-
SCENARIO ASSUMPTIONS. KÖPPEN-GEIGER Tropical Savanna
CLIMATE REGIONS SHOWN AT RIGHT.

Cubango Cuito ANGOLA ZAMBIA

NIGHT ACTIVITY AF R Oka v RIgo A wetland Zambezi
15 in
The heat stress and water loss animals experience during rainy season IC ZIMBABWE
the day from evaporation are lessened after dark. But nights average Okavango
are cold—and filled with predators—as they forage. rainfall Delta 15 in
Maun Makgadikgadi
15 in Pans
Etosha 10 in
Pan s

5 in 5 inACACIA WOODLANDS
ECOREGION
Brown hyena Gemsbok
Hyaena brunnea Oryx gazella Dry open woodland
These scavengers with bone-
crushing jaws chew on moist Gemsbok can regulate their brain K 15 in
tsama melons—up to 18 a night— temperature to reduce evaporative
to get enough water to survive. water loss and can reabsorb liquid NAMIBIA L Ghanzi
waste in their kidneys and colon. A
Verreaux’s intermittent river B O T S WA N A
eagle owl
N Windhoek Sweeping sands

Gobabis A The Kalahari includes
Earth’s largest contin-
10 in Serowe

amib H uous body of sandy

KEEPING A COOL HEAD 5 in A soils, arenosols, which Limpopo
Stampriet barely sustain life.
1 When temperatures TROPIC OF CAPRICORN
peak, nasal mucus cools
a gemsbok’s blood as it Mariental A q u i f e r XERIC SAVANNA ECOREGION Molepolole
inhales air.
Extremely dry natural grassland Gaborone 15 in
2 The blood continues DESERT
to the cavernous sinus, Auo Nossob
where it cools a web of Dese b 15 in
blood vessels going from M olopo
the brain to the heart. Scarce water 15 in
Cavernous Other than what’s Tshabong sandy
3 Valves in blood ves- Brain sinus belowground, the only soil
sels leading to the 2 natural water sources TSWALU KALAHARI
brain can switch off in the Kalahari are NATURE RESERVE Vaal
the cooling process. seasonally flooded
pans, also known as
r ephemeral lakes.

t

Nasal Orange Upington 5 in SOUTH AFRICA
mucosa
3 Augrabies 10 in
1 Falls Kimberley
rainy season Bloemfontein
average rainfall
Maseru
LESOTHO

Facial vein

Snouted Shutoff PARCHED EXPANSE 10,500 3,200
harvester valve feet meters
termite The unforgiving landscape of
Carotid the semiarid Kalahari plateau is 5,250 1,600
Small artery a unique and varied combina-
teeth tion of dry eco-regions, sandy
Feces soils, and rainfall patterns. Dry Humid
Wide flat Percent water Sea level
tongue
Aardwolf 75% 75 mi
Proteles cristata 75 km
Licking up termites on the sand, the 50%
aardwolf swallows without chewing. Human Gemsbok Cape Town Data shown
Stomach acid breaks down toxins in Cape of Good Hope on the map
the termites; sand is passed in feces. As they produce waste,
gemsbok can reabsorb Cape Agulha 3 in
25 percent more water
than humans can. Average inches
per month

November D J F M A M J J A S October

FERNANDO G. BAPTISTA, MATTHEW W. CHWASTYK, CHRISTINA SHINTANI, IRENE BERMAN-VAPORIS, RELIABLE GROUNDWATER WET SEASON DRY SEASON
AND EVE CONANT, NGM STAFF; PATRICIA HEALY; SHIZUKA AOKI; MICHAEL STANFEL
The wet season brings a scattering Water Sand, gravel, Groundwater stored in aquifers 200 ft
SOURCES: ANTHONY LOWNEY, U. OF CAPE TOWN; W. MAARTIN STRAUSS, U. OF SOUTH AFRICA; of short-lived storms, with an aver- and calcrete is a vital resource. Dampened
ANDREA FULLER, U. OF THE WITWATERSRAND; JAN KAMLER, U. OF OXFORD; J.N. MAINA, U. OF age yearly rainfall of 13.7 inches. soils above bring water within
JOHANNESBURG; HALEY O’BRIEN, OKLAHOMA STATE U.; MARTA MANSER, U. OF ZURICH; RITA The water seeps quickly through reach of tree taproots that
COVAS, U. OF PORTO; ANDREW MCKECHNIE, U. OF PRETORIA; COLLEEN SEYMOUR, SOUTH AFRICAN the sand to deep aquifers. lift the water back up.
NATIONAL BIODIVERSITY INSTITUTE (SANBI); CALLUM MUNDAY, DAVID THOMAS, AND GILES
WIGGS, U. OF OXFORD; ABI STONE, MANCHESTER U.; FRANK ECKHART, U. OF CAPE TOWN; HYLKE Aquifer
BECK, PRINCETON CLIMATE ANALYTICS, INC; TIM MCVICAR, CSIRO LAND AND WATER; ECOREGION
SNAPSHOTS, RESOLVE; ESDAC; CHIRPS; ORASECOM; KNMI CLIMATE EXPLORER; NASA

Emerging from their
burrows after dark,
ground pangolins will
each eat about 15,000
ants and termites in
a night—5.5 million in a
year. Insect abundance
depends on healthy
grasses, the thread
that binds life on these
nutrient-poor sands.
Without summer rains,
the greening will fail.



temperatures and more frequent and intense nutrition and water she needs to survive in this
droughts if, as predicted, atmospheric carbon parched dunescape.
dioxide pollution keeps heating the planet?
Satisfied with her first feeding, Hopewell 3
Answering that question will be key to how toddles off in search of her next course. The
the reserve’s managers balance the abun- humans follow behind, hoping for gold.
dance of the grasses with the appetites of the
creatures that depend on them, from grazing O CTOBER IN THE SOUTHERN KALAHARI is
insects and their pangolin predators to the anguished and liminal, poised for rains
roaming antelope herds and the carnivores that to break the fast. The dry winter of 2020
chase them down. has drawn to a close, and the grasses that
anchor the dunes are as brittle as fine fos-
When Hopewell 3 surfaces, she’ll announce sils. Winter has taken its usual toll. The dunes
herself with sound. Eventually, they hear it— are also threadbare after intermittent droughts
even over the clicking of geckos—the scritch- and decades of gleaning by cattle and, more
scratch of bony grass rasping against the recently, game such as antelope, zebras, wilde-
pangolin’s scales. Panaino and Phakoago glide to beests, and buffalo.
their feet, their headlamps casting a stage light
into which Hopewell 3 sways, floating over the Forecasts hint that this summer’s rains may be
dune like a hunched clockwork toy in a suit of good. A La Niña has been brewing half a planet
armor. Her shield of articulated plates starts with away in the Pacific Ocean. This cyclical ocean-
a widow’s peak over the bridge of her nose and atmosphere dance usually conjures rain for parts
flares out across her shoulders. It flows down her
domed back and tapers across a broad plank of
tail. The hem has a jagged edge.

If startled, she’ll snap into a ball so tight that
even a lion would struggle to pry her open.
But Hopewell 3 is unfazed. She totters across
the dune on stout hind legs, her feet press-
ing blunt marks in the sand. Her forelegs are
tucked demurely into her chest, like a mantis
in prayer, touching the ground only when she
tips off kilter.

A button eye glints above a conical snout that
nods this way and that, reading the ground.
Olfactory wizardry leads her to tonight’s first
course: cocktail ants, as they’re commonly
called. She claws at the bole of a runty gray
camel thorn, pulling the cap from a nest hidden
in the bark, releasing a rivulet of ants flowing
up the trunk.

She plunges headfirst into the stream, face
hidden as her sticky ribbon-tongue laps up din-
ner. It’s impossible to know how many ants she
eats with each mouthful, but after five years of
sifting through the digested remains of meals
like this, Panaino knows that less than a third
of what the pangolin takes in tonight will be
insects. The rest will be dune sand. Panaino
also knows that Hopewell 3’s preferred foods
are cocktail ants, pugnacious ants, and snouted
harvester termites.

Panaino has calculated that on average the
pangolin will eat about 15,000 of the rice-grain-
size insects each night, supplying most of the

130 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

LEFT

When summer thun-
derstorms roll in across
the Kalahari, their
soaking rains bring
an explosion of life,
including insects such
as armored katydids.
Grass and insects are
vital links in the food
chain that nourishes
Tswalu’s animals and
stabilizes the dunes
against the push-pull
of the wind.

BELOW

After this meerkat
shakes off the katydid,
the insect may end
up as its snack. Meer-
kat pups don’t gain
weight as quickly in
hotter weather, pos-
sibly, researchers say,
because the insects
they eat contain less
water. Meerkat pups
may lose water and
energy as they battle
to regulate their
body temperature.

T H E E D G E O F S U R V I VA L 131

A long exposure shows
flight trails across a
night sky flashing with
lightning. Scientists
have counted 221 spe-
cies of moths in Tswalu.
Some take flight after
rains soften the soil,
releasing adults from
buried cocoons. The
reserve also has 77
species of butterflies,
about 10 of which fly
through the reserve
every year, a journey
dubbed the Kgalagadi
butterfly migration.



Grass, fed by rain, makes life possible in this
nutrient-scant ocean of sand. But climate change
is likely to shorten the rainy season.

of southern Africa. It’s the yin to the El Niño’s paths, corralling the remaining wild herds into
parching yang, and Tswalu is gasping for it. reserves like this one.

On an artist’s swatch, the color of the sand Conditions are changing further still. During
might show as pumpkin or carrot, tinting into the past half century, temperatures in parts of
apricot when the sun’s low on the horizon. But southern Africa have risen at twice the rate of
life here doesn’t have the effortless fecundity the global average.
of an orchard. Rust doesn’t describe its partic-
ular hue either, even though it’s mixed from a According to the South African Weather Ser-
palette of ground-down quartzites stained by vice, 2015, 2016, and 2019 were the hottest years
oxidized iron. on record since at least 1950. In January 2016,
thermometers at Augrabies Falls, about 150
Grass is the golden thread that makes life miles southwest of Tswalu, registered more than
possible in this nutrient-scant ocean of sand. 119°F. That’s “amongst the highest temperatures
It tethers the dunes against the winds’ pull. It ever recorded so high above sea level in the
soaks fickle moisture from the soil and dams it Southern Hemisphere,” says Stefaan Conradie,
in its cells, to quench the thirst of ants and ter- a doctoral researcher with the Climate System
mites; their subterranean homes are larders for Analysis Group at the University of Cape Town,
pangolins and aardvarks but also insect-eating and “the second highest reliably measured tem-
bat-eared foxes and aardwolves. perature in southern Africa.” Without climate
change, the 2015-16 heat wave would have been
Grass is the wattle and daub for the Kala- about a 1-in-10,000-year event, he says, citing
hari’s aerial architects—the sociable weaver- recent analysis.
birds, whose decades-old nesting chambers
are stitched from grass blades. These high-rise How temperature increases will disrupt rain-
tenements give shelter to generations of weavers fall is difficult to predict, but in this part of the
and also draw in African pygmy falcons as ten- continent, the summer rainy season is likely
ants. Their avian residents entice hungry Cape to start later and be shorter. When rainstorms
cobras and boomslange whose lithe forms loop occur, they may be more intense, dropping
among the chambers like strings in a chande- greater volumes of water over shorter periods,
lier. Grass is fodder for the grazing ungulates which could result in surface flooding. There
that themselves are food for lions, cheetahs, could be longer dry spells between storms.
leopards, wild dogs, and other predators of the
African savanna. What could this mean for the tenuous web of
animals and plants in the southern Kalahari?
Rebirth in Tswalu starts with the rain-fed flush What would happen if the summer rains failed
of grass. Thundershowers deliver an average of repeatedly, if drought conditions were more fre-
about 13 inches a year, and they’re notoriously quent, if the summertime greening didn’t come
capricious. In some years, rain gauges might reg- on time? What would it mean for the ants and
ister fewer than seven inches; in others, nearly termites that fill up their underground larders
double the average. In times past, game animals with seeds and grasses each summer?
responded to the boom-and-bust greening by
traveling across great distances, often tracking And if the numbers of those insects fell dras-
the rain clouds, knowing that they would lead tically, what would happen to the pangolins,
them to grazing bonanzas. But decades of cat- already threatened with poaching in many
tle ranching slung fence lines across migratory parts of southern Africa, and the other ant-
eating mammals?

134 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

T HE AARDVARK looks as if it has trotted Tswalu limped into the next winter with poorly
right out of a nonsense verse: the snout stocked pantries.
of a pig, the ears of an ass, an improbably
long face in between. It has the skin of a While following her study aardvarks and
balding man and whiskers like the eye- decrypting their scat, Weyer noted a dramatic
lashes of a drag artist, but only on the lower lids. reduction in grasses, which she knew would lead
to a decline in harvester termites. By summer’s
Aardvark means “earth pig” in Afrikaans, and end, the aardvarks were wasting away, their
they’re earthmoving machines. Shovel-shaped spines and hip bones straining against drum-
claws on taloned feet allow an aardvark to jack- tight hides. These normally nocturnal animals
hammer through baked soil crust, opening up started leaving their burrows during the day,
the ground for burrow-building or to break into sometimes even before noon, in search of food
rooms stuffed with bugs. to make up for their hungry nights.

A host of other animals—jackals, Cape cobras, The implants indicated that the animals’ body
puff adders, pythons, ground squirrels, mice, temperature swung wildly in 24-hour periods,
wild cats, warthogs, swallows, chats—use the compared with more stable body temperatures
underground dwellings that aardvarks hol- when their food supply was reliable and their
low out in a sort of time-share arrangement to energy levels good. This suggested that they
endure the Kalahari’s extremes. weren’t getting enough energy to stay warm at
night, and they seemed to compensate by using
Nora Weyer, also with the Witwatersrand the daylight hours to bask and warm up.
physiology lab at the time, tracked aardvarks
in Tswalu from the winter of 2012 to the spring But this immediate emergency adaptation
of 2015 for her doctoral work. She used small didn’t see many of Weyer’s aardvarks through
traps sunk into the ground to collect ants and to the next rainy season. Of the six animals
looked for telltale conical soil heaps left by ter- equipped with trackers in the study in 2012, five
mites in the area to measure their abundance. died in 2013. Weyer saw the bodies of many other
She collected their scat to find out what insects dead aardvarks in the veld, and survivors looked
they ate, and how many, and found that har- listless, dazed, and gaunt. The message from this
vester termites account for about 90 percent of drought year was clear: If the rains fail, even for
an aardvark’s water and energy needs. She also a single summer, the fabric that keeps grasses,
monitored temperature-logging implants in ants, termites, and insect-eating animals woven
the aardvarks to determine if the animals were together for survival may start to unravel.
getting enough energy to keep warm through
the chilly Kalahari nights, when daily minimum A FTER HOPEWELL 3 has supped on her
temperatures can dip to about 65°F in summer first helping of cocktail ants, she follows
and even nudge below freezing in winter. a meandering loop to her regular haunts,
moving with an endearing swank and
In typical years, when the summer rains swagger. Panaino’s sneakered feet tread
arrive with their usual sound-and-light show, lightly behind her, while Phakoago slips away
the dunes burst to life, with ants and termites to scan for signs of buried dung.
thriving and aardvarks feasting on them. But
in the first summer of Weyer’s study, 2012 into About an hour later, the pangolin pauses, and
2013, no rain fell during the hottest months.
The overall season was well below average, and

What researchers learn about the secretive lives
of creatures on the dunes could help
conservation managers protect the Kalahari.

135

scoops a slim hollow into the sand. Panaino an improvised ditty about “pango poo.”
shimmers with excitement, flashing her light A few days later, Phakoago is back at the
to alert Phakoago.
research site, with little more than a bucket, jug,
Poised over the depression, Hopewell 3 delivers tea strainer, and a take-out food container as her
a mound of glistening black scat. Panaino usually lab equipment.
avoids interfering with study animals, but if the
pangolin drags her tail as she waddles off, this She weighs dried scat collected two months
Kalahari gold will melt into the sand. Using one earlier. Then she drops it into the bucket, sloshes
finger, Panaino raises the pangolin’s tail a frac- a cup or two of water onto the sample to separate
tion as she moves, keeping the treasure intact. the good stuff from the sand, and swirls the con-
tainer like a frontier woman panning for gold.
For the scientists, it’s hard enough to find an
animal as secretive as this, let alone the dung The dung dissolves into a coffee-colored
that might otherwise be lost in the sand. The two brew with a foam of body parts—mostly ant
women are on their knees, scooping it up with and termite heads and a million pinprick
bare fingers and dropping it into a sample bag. legs—collecting on the surface. She sieves the
Once they’ve recovered every last fragment, they liquid, gathering a heap of what looks like cof-
erupt into a synchronized jig, stage-whispering fee grounds. Later she’ll put a small sample of
this under a microscope and count every insect

136 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

comparison between the two animals’ feed-
ing patterns.

Based on Panaino’s findings—that a pango-
lin eats an average of 15,000 ants and termites
a night—she calculates that it eats 5.5 million
a year. Add to that the number of ants and ter-
mites eaten by one aardvark and one aardwolf
in a year, and Panaino estimates the total for all
three is about 100 million insects. The number
would be far higher if it included the many other
animals that also feed on ants and termites, even
in part. Sociable weavers, for example, eat mostly
plants, but about a tenth of their diet is termites,
and the ant-eating chat is as its name suggests.

Aardvarks—elusive L ATE ONE EVENING, while Panaino and
night creatures, like Phakoago scan the radio waves for signs of
pangolins—excavate Hopewell 3 and other nearby study animals,
burrows and crack the change comes.
open heat-baked soil It starts with iridescent orbs exploding
to tap earthen mother voicelessly on the western horizon. But in less
lodes of termites, than an hour, strobes of lightning play closer on
which provide most the surrounding dunes, followed by the sound of
of their food and a drum mallet drawn across a corrugated tin roof.
water needs. A recent The sky begins to shatter. Luminous cracks tear
drought showed that through the clouds, skewering nearby hills with
when grasses die and retina-searing blasts. The percussion is a clatter
termite numbers crash, of cymbals and a roll of shuddering bass drums.
aardvarks languish.
A timpani of droplets smacks the ground,
head, identifying and tabulating each species. ephemeral islands of moisture in an ocean
The researchers use this laborious technique of desiccated sand, filling the air with iron-
scented mist. The researchers decide to retire
to understand the nuances of pangolins’ and for the night—it’s too dangerous to be out on the
aardvarks’ diets. This knowledge ultimately will exposed dunes, and with the elements this volu-
yield a better appreciation for the complexity ble, the pangolins are very likely staying inside.
of relationships that weave back to the veld and
how it should be managed. The crescendo is brief. The space between the
veins of light and their accompanying drum-
The drought that gripped Tswalu during beats soon draws further apart and farther away
Weyer’s aardvark study gave her baseline data as the storm hurries off to the east. It is over for
for comparing aardvarks’ diet in good and bad now, but this is how the rains should come. This
foraging years and noting their resulting behav- is how the greening should begin. The grasses
ior changes. will send up lush spears, seeds will swell like
dewdrops on their tips, and the life that depends
Panaino’s study shows what pangolins eat, and on their abundance will feast once more.
how much. Phakoago’s contribution is to exam-
ine the dung of both pangolins and aardvarks, The geckos once again take up their chorus,
collected in the same seasons and under the clicking into the night. j
same conditions, and give an apples-to-apples
South African science writer Leonie Joubert’s
books include Scorched, Boiling Point, and
The Hungry Season. Frequent contributor
Thomas P. Peschak photographed the October
2019 story about sea turtles.

T H E E D G E O F S U R V I VA L 137

INSTAGRAM JULIA WIMMERLIN

FROM OUR PHOTOGRAPHERS

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