A group of 60 hippos face certain death in Namibia’s Caprivi region as a natural water channel close to the Chobe River on the border to Botswana is fast drying up, the Namibia Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) reported Wednesday.

The NBC showed footage of 60 mostly adult trapped hippos huddled closely together, trying desperately to move around in thick mud in the channel near Kapani, some 80 kilometers south-east of the Caprivi regional capital of Katima Mulilo.

After the eastern Caprivi was hit by severe floods of the Zambezi River in May this year, the southern parts where the Chobe River forms the natural border to Botswana had very little rain, threatening buffalos, crocodiles and elephants.

The NBC quoted a local resident, Ignatius Kamuna, as saying the community was worried about losing the wild animals, as they were important for tourism and that hippos were keeping the natural water channels free from vegetation overgrowth.