Botswana is topographically flat, with up to 70% of its territory being the Kalahari Desert, but nevertheless has diverse areas of wildlife habitat. Lying southeast of the Okavango Delta and surrounded by the Kalahari Desert, the Makgadikgadi Pan is all that remained of a lake which dried up several thousand years ago, now being one of the largest salt flats in the world. Seasonally covered with water and grass, is a refuge for birds and animals. The fringes of the pan are salt marshes and further out these are circled by grassland and then shrubby savanna. Kubu Island is an igneous rock "island" located in the southwestern quadrant of Sua Pan, and contains a number of baobab trees (in the picture). These trees function as local landmarks, and one of them, named after James Chapman, served as an unofficial post office for 19th-century explorers. It was submitted in 2010 on the Tentative List of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
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