It’s early morning, long before sunrise. I’m snuggled up in bed, warm and cosy, in a tent on Shoebill Island, a tiny islet in the Bangweulu Wetlands. The camp is tucked into a grove of quinine trees and I’m reluctant to leave it and go out into the cold. We’ve woken early to paddle through the complex mass of narrow, vegetation-choked channels leading to the floodplains, where we hope to see the endemic black lechwe that make this unique wetland home.
In the local Bembe language, Bangweulu means ‘where the water meets the sky’, which perfectly describes this community-owned, protected area in north-eastern Zambia. Spread across 9,850sq km, this extraordinary ecosystem comprises floodplains, seasonally-flooded grasslands, miombo woodlands and permanent swamps — and is regarded as one of Africa’s most important wetlands. During