Zimbabwe now part of world’s largest conservation area

If elephants never forget, here is some good news they should remember for a long time.

Government ministers of Zimbabwe, Angola, Namibia, Zambia and Botswana came together in March 2012 to form the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (Kaza).

The new area spans 109 million acres and combines 36 individual nature reserves where the five countries borders meet. It is the size of a country like Italy.

Kaza contains the famous Victoria Falls, one of the largest waterfalls on Earth, as well as the Okavango Delta in Botswana, a unique wetlands area that is home to lions, leopards, hyenas, African wild dog, rhinoceroses, baboons, crocodiles, and many others.

According to the World Wildlife Fund, 44 percent of Africa’s remaining elephants live in this area.

Elephants in Namibia. Photo by Ministry of Environment and Tourism, Namibia.

By removing fences, creating safe corridors, and by offering income opportunities through tourism and other activities to local communities, Kaza will protect the future of the elephants. A major objective of the project is to reduce the impact elephants have on the environment, by giving them back the space they need to migrate when a habitat’s limitations demand it. Hopefully culling will become a thing of the past.

This wonderful news comes in the same month as the devastating news from Cameroon that half of the elephant population there were slaughtered by poachers, enabling mega-wealthy Chinese business people to make money out of ivory trinkets.

Details: www.kavangozambezi.org

Map of the new Kaza conservation area from www.africanconservation.org