Common Zebras, quus quagga in Amboseli National Park, Kenya.
A pair of zebras, quus quagga, roam what was once Lake Amboseli looking for any food they can find in the dusty, dried out lake bed.
After leaving the lush Maasai Mara, the drought ridden Amboseli National Park was a shock to me. I could never have imagined a drought this severe. Iâve been to many different deserts which have all teemed with life, but this was beyond anything I had ever experienced. Caracases of animals that had died of starvation lay amongst the living. Animals scrounged for whatever remained of the grasses that once grew in the area during the rainy seasons. Dust devils could be seen in every direction you looked. The dust covered everything, nothing was unaffected by it.
In the traditional Maasai language Amboseli means âsalty, dusty placeâ. Located in southern Kenya, Amboseli National Park lives in the rain shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro where rain used to fall between March and May and then October to December. Once a refuge for animals during droughts, Amboseli has become a symbol of climate-change-fueled drought and the collision of wildlife and human farms that have cut off the animals migratory paths.
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