“Go to the banks of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever trees, and find out.” These iconic words, published over 120 prior, are always in the back of my mind when travelling to this incredible part of South Africa.

It is in some ways a surprise that the Limpopo Valley, particulary the region lying to the west of the world-renowned Greater Mapungubwe Transfrontier Conservation Area, is still so poorly known. Perhaps this has been one of the saving graces for many of the species that call it home, resulting in little disturbance throughout certain areas.

A standout feature here are the large tracts of Ana trees dotting the islands and the banks of the Limpopo River, forming ancient forests that form an important habitat for breeding White-backed Vultures, Pel’s Fishing Owls, and is even one of the only breeding sites for Marabou Stalks in the country.

Recently, I had the opportunity to spend time with Dr Sarah Venter from the Baobab Foundation to do a preliminary investigation on the impacts that Elephant populations are having on these trees. I travelled up to meet Dr Venter in the Soutpansberg, before driving down to Ratho Bush camp. Following our arrival, we immediately spent the last part of the day searching for any Vulture nest trees, looking at whether the nest is active or not, and how much bark has been stripped from the trunk. Fortunately, many of the trees here, and a few on other properties, have had mesh wrapped around their trunks to protect them, and although this is an effective way of reducing bark stripping, it is of course not possible to do this for every tree. The recent drought in Botswana appears to have exacerbated the situation, and a similar trend has started to emerge throughout the area we visited, with landowners also expressing concern about this.

Over the next few days were spent our time walking significant tracts of river, and although it was an amazing experience, it was incredibly alarming to see how serious the situation is, with a large proportion of un-meshed trees having either large parts of their trunks debarked, or completely ring-barked. This is an inevitable precursor to these river giants’ eventual demise.

Considering the threats that species such as White-backed Vultures face at present, particularly with wildlife poisoning taking its toll on the population at a continental level, the risk of losing significant tracts of suitable breeding habitat is not something that can easily be ignored. Although this visit opens the conversation around the next steps to mitigate the loss of riparian forest in the region, there is still a significant amount of work lying ahead before we can start to restore this fragile habitat to its former glory.