| At 22 500 square kilometres, Kafue National Park is one of the largest in Africa. Its northern sector is what Wilderness Safaris strives for when choosing its camps: remote, wild and diverse with vast tracts of pristine wilderness.
The Lunga River in the east is a permanent tributary of the Kafue River and beyond its narrow strip of riverine forest the landscape is patterned with broad-leafed woodland, open plains, floodplains and island thickets. In the north-west of Kafue, the Busanga Plains is a vast savannah of seasonally inundated grasslands dotted with tree islands and areas of broad-leafed woodland.
Birdlife is abundant and includes many species that do not occur elsewhere in southern Africa. Zambia's single endemic species, Chaplin's Barbet, does occur, but the thrill is to be found in the diversity and abundance of nearly 500 recorded species and good concentrations of Wattled Crane (Zambia contains more than half the world's population) and various pelicans, storks and herons. Other specials of the plains are Locust Finch, Rosy-throated and Fülleborn's Longclaws, Kori and Denham's Bustards, while birds of the woodland and riverine areas include Ross's Turaco, Blue-breasted Bee-eater, Pale-billed Hornbill, Miombo Pied Barbet and Red-capped Crombec.
With more than 150 species recorded, mammals are equally diverse, with regular sightings of lion, leopard, elephant, buffalo and cheetah, hippo and good numbers of plains game such as zebra and wildebeest. A number of other species not readily encountered further south are often seen, such as puku, Defassa waterbuck and Lichtenstein's hartebeest, oribi and roan.
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