The Skeleton Coast National Park (SCNP) stretches about 500 km along the Atlantic Coast of Namibia, from the Ugab River in the south to the Kunene River in the north. To the south, the park borders on the Dorob National Park, and in the north on Angola’s Iona National Park, with which it forms the Iona-Skeleton Coast Transfrontier Conservation Area. On the east, the SCNP borders communal conservancies - Marienfluss, Orupembe, Sanitatas, Okondjombo, Puros, Sesfontein, Torra, Doro!nawas - and the Palmwag tourism concession area. The park's east-west width varies between 25 and 50 km and it covers +- 17,000 km2. The elevation ranges from sea level to 703 m. The area was classified as the ‘Namib biogeographical province' of the 'Africotropical realm' by Udvardy (1975), the 'Namib Desert' in the 'Deserts of Southern Africa ecoregion' of the 'Afrotropical biogeographical realm' by the WWF (2001; Olson & Dinerstein, 2002), and the '(Namib) Desert biome' by Irish (1994), Mendelsohn et al. (2002) and Shaw (n.d.). The SCNP is bordered in the west by the Atlantic Ocean, and more specifically the Benguela Current Large Marine Ecosystem, stretching from Cape Agulhas in South Africa in the south (35°S) to about Moçâmedes (former Namíbe) in Angola in the north (15°S). The cold Benguela Current from the south meets the warmer, tropical Angola Current from the north at the seasonally shifting Angola-Benguela Front between 14°S and 16°S. During late summer and autumn, when southerly winds are weaker, the Benguela upwelling system also weakens and warmer water from the tropical, more saline Angola Current intrudes further south (Sakko, 1998). Both Mendelsohn and el Obeid (2005), and the UNESCO/AETFAT/UNSO Vegetation Map of Africa (White, 1983) classified this region as the 'Namib Desert' vegetation unit, while Giess (1971) classified the vegetation of the area between the Ugab and Huab Rivers as 'Central Namib' and from the Huab to the Kunene as 'Northern Namib'.