Where the Dry Rivers Flow – Across the Red Sands of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park

Photographs by Steve Segall
Photo essay by Alexandra George

Among the best-known works associated with the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park is South African wildlife photographer Hannes Lochner’s acclaimed The Dark Side of the Kalahari, a long-term photographic study that followed the life of a female leopard named Luna and helped bring the drama and beauty of the Kalahari ecosystem to an international audience. The park’s open terrain, dramatic predator interactions and striking desert light have long made it a favourite destination for wildlife photographers and filmmakers. Stretching across more than 38,000 square kilometres of South Africa and Botswana, with ecological links extending into Namibia’s southern Kalahari, the Kgalagadi is internationally renowned for its red dunes, dry riverbeds and remarkable concentration of desert‑adapted wildlife, including black-maned lions, leopards, cheetahs, honey badgers, meerkats, oryx and large herds of springbok. The photographs in this gallery by South African-born wildlife photographer Steve Segall seek to capture something of the stillness, tension and quiet rhythms of life in one of Africa’s last great desert wildernesses.

Lioness leading her cubs across the Kalahari sands

Leopard resting in the golden light of the Kgalagadi

Leopard pausing beneath the trees

Leopard cub hidden in the dry grass

Black-maned lion resting with the pride

Cheetah moving through golden grass

Cheetah pausing on the open plain

Ostriches dust-bathing at sunrise

Meerkat standing watch in the Kalahari

Black-backed jackal at the waterhole

Black-backed jackal in the last golden light

Honey badger foraging beside a pale chanting goshawk

Portrait of a springbok

Oryx resting on the Kalahari sands

Young giraffes at dusk in the Kalahari