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From 6 July 2006, a graphic version of the current edition is available at the Daily News Online web site.

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Mr Fane blamed the problem partly on natural acts like rock weathering, dust but most importantly human interference given that the area was invariably swamped by tourists.

On average, Mr Fane said, they received between 12000 and 15000 visitors a year, thus 1000 a month or about 40 per day. However, he said the number was not alarmingly high in that other world heritage sites of the same category received similar numbers.

Consequently, the Department of National Museum and Monument is in the process of implementing a management plan to protect the site and ensure that it remained one of the worlds heritage sites.

The plan, according to Mr Fane, would guard against rapid disappearance of significant traits like rock paintings due to congestion of tourists in the area.

The overall vision is to design, develop and manage, in the long term, a fully operational and sustainable world heritage site and museum.

Also, Mr Fane said the plan was to ensure long term protection of key attributes especially rock art and other archaeological artifacts as well as maintenance of its essence and intrinsic character for the benefit of Batswana.

Mr Fane said regular human contact and breath led to degradation of the paitnings. As such, he said part of the recommendations was to have a group of 10 people climbing the hill at a time.

He added that they were also trying to do what they termed product differentiation to avoid many people converging on one site. Besides, they would soon close some sites while others were to be rehabilitated.

Nonetheless, Mr Fane said the costs for sustainable maintenance of the site and provision of public education, interpretation services as well as facilitation of management activities were likely to be financed through the national purse.

Meanwhile, Mr Fane said Tsodilo would provide an ecotourism opportunity that visitors to the area would wish to enjoy as part of the areas tourism attraction aspect.

The costs of providing public tourism opportunities and facilities would normally be regarded as a service that should be self-funding rather than government funded, he said.

It would, therefore, be appropriate for an entry fee to be levied on visitors to contribute towards overall maintenance costs.

Mr Fane said the management plan was formulated with the objective of protecting the overall integrity of the site, natural, cultural and historic significance as well as its uniqueness.

Rock paintings in Tsodilo are estimated to be about 3000 years old and are anticipated to exist for the next 100 years.

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