This species is restricted to northern tropical regions of Namibia, with probably fewer than 50 individuals recorded regularly in Namibia, though several hundred birds have been recorded episodically under favourable conditions in the Kwando and Linyanti Swamps, the Chobe River and Lake Liambezi. On rare occasions it is recorded as a vagrant to dams and coastal wetlands among the more common Great White Pelican P. onocrotalus. Only four breeding colonies are known: one in the Salambala Conservancy on the Chobe River floodplain, where about 25 birds were recorded in August 1998 and 125 birds in September 2001, and two from the Linyanti Swamps.