Kalahari Meerkat Project Northern Cape, South Africa, close to the border to Botswana, the project is jointly funded by Cambridge University and the Kalahari Research Trust. The project was founded in the early nineties by researchers (Prof. Tim Clutton-Brock) at Cambridge University. It was originally based on the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, but in 1993 moved to the Kuruman River Reserve, an area spanning approximately twenty square miles of semi-arid area of the Kalahari Desert on either side of the mostly dry Kuruman River. The reserve consists primarily of sparsely vegetated fossil dunes that flatten out near the river, which is usually dry. The
Kalahari Desert and South Africa, and encroaching into parts of Angola, Zambia and Zimbabwe. North and east, approximately where the dry forests, savannahs and salt lakes prevail, the climate is sub-humid rather than semi-arid. South and west, where the vegetation is predominantly xeric savanna or even a semi-desert, the climate is "Kalaharian" semi-arid. The Kalaharian climate is subtropical (average annual temperature greater than or equal to 18 °C, at peaks reaching 40 °C and above, with mean monthly temperature of the coldest month strictly below 18 °C), and is semi-arid with the dry season during the "cold" season, the coldest six months