OUR WORK
Conservation at scale
To ensure functionality within the KAZA landscape, we identified two key elements that need our attention. First we have to engage in field level interventions aimed at ensuring habitat integrity and ecosystem functionality, especially where the ecosystems transcend the borders of the countries. Secondly we need to address cross-cutting issues that are deemed essential for all five partner countries, namely tourism and community development. We work on the ground in two specific protected areas in this landscape.
Simalaha Community Conservancy
In the Simalaha Community Conservancy the Sesheke and Sekhute Chiefdoms are taking ownership of their own destiny, following a community-led approach to improve basic human rights – by responsibly managing and protecting natural resources and wildlife.
Sioma Ngwezi National Park
Within the Zambia component of the KAZA TFCA lies the Sioma Ngwezi Management Complex, an area that was declared by the Litunga – the King of the Barotse Royal Establishment – as a protected area more than a century ago.
Ecological linkages
A key objective of KAZA is to ensure connectivity between key wildlife areas, and where necessary, join fragmented wildlife habitats in order to form an interconnected mosaic of protected areas, as well as restore transboundary wildlife migratory corridors between wildlife dispersal areas (WDAs). These corridors re-establish and conserve large-scale ecological processes that extend beyond the boundaries of protected areas.
Within the landscape six geographically specific wildlife dispersal areas have been identified. These areas offer critical ecological and, in particular, wildlife movement linkages between protected areas across the landscape. The six wildlife dispersal areas include the Zambezi-Chobe Floodplain; Hwange-Kazuma–Chobe; Kwando; Zambezi-Mosi Oa Tunya; Hwange-Makgadikgadi-Nxai; and Khaudum-Ngamiland. Currently, we focus on two of these dispersal areas.
The Chobe-Zambezi Floodplain Wildlife Dispersal Area
One of the prioritised wildlife dispersal areas is the Zambezi-Chobe Floodplain area, a large wetland shared between Botswana, Namibia and Zambia, of which the Simalaha Community Conservancy, the eastern Zambezi region in Namibia, and the wetlands of the Chobe National Park in Botswana form the core regarding connectivity between the Chobe National Park in Botswana and the Kafue National Park in Zambia.
The overall objective is to develop a sustainable wildlife economy in the Zambezi-Chobe Floodplain area within KAZA based on strong community ownership, benefit sharing, resource protection and integrated management of agriculture, settlements and services. This will enhance livelihoods, secure wildlife corridors and dispersal areas and expand the wildlife economy in the area between Chobe (Botswana) and Kafue (Zambia) national parks.
There are currently several community conservation areas and community development initiatives which support the development of this wildlife dispersal area on both sides of the Zambia and Namibia border. Peace Parks Foundation works with the Mwandi and Sekute chiefdoms to develop the Simalaha Community Conservancy in Zambia.
The Kwando Wildlife Dispersal Area
As one of the prioritised wildlife dispersal areas, the Kwando wildlife dispersal area comprises the Luengue-Luiana National Park in Angola, the Sioma-Ngwezi National Park in Zambia, Mudumu and Bwabwata National Parks in Namibia with their associated conservancies and game management areas. What makes this wildlife dispersal area so unique is that borders are unfenced and there is unrestricted wildlife movement here. Elephants from Chobe move across the conservancies and national parks in the Zambezi region of Namibia and disperse along the Kwando River into the Luengue-Luiana National Park in Angola and into Sioma Ngwezi in Zambia.
Rewilding
Peace Parks facilitates and funds extensive rewilding in the areas we work in. In KAZA we have an active footprint in the Simalaha Community Conservancy and the Sioma Ngwezi National Park, to which we have translocated 284 animals, the bulk of which are plains game which now roam the Zambezi flood plains of Simalaha alongside thriving herds of community owned cattle.
Combatting wildlife crime
Wildlife crime remains a major challenge in this expansive wildlife dispersal area. To monitor and protect the movement of wildlife, it is critical for the government agencies in Angola, Botswana, Namibia and Zambia to work together, liaise and coordinate with each other on specific issues. The poaching crisis is further compounded by the fact that rangers and law enforcement have to contend with a serious lack of resources such as vehicles, boats, rations, fuel, petrol and general camping equipment, as well as limited communication networks and a lack of cross border cooperation between law enforcement agencies. In this area our work centres around supporting the Zambian Government to manage the Sioma-Ngwezi National Park and develop the Silowana Complex.
Community development
A core focus of this transfrontier conservation area is to improve the socio-economic conditions of the approximately two million people residing within KAZA by routing development, tourism and conservation projects to them in line with the transboundary landscape objectives.
Conservation finance
Funding
The German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development is the major funder of the KAZA transboundary landscape, through KfW. As implementing agent for KfW funding in this TFCA, Peace Parks continues to support the KAZA Secretariat to manage project funds and provide technical support through the KAZA Secretariat Support Group and the various Working Groups.
Tourism
Kavango Zambezi promises to be southern Africa’s premier tourist destination with the largest contiguous population of the African elephant (approximately 250 000) on the continent. Conservation and tourism will be the vehicle for socio-economic development in the region. The landscape abounds with magnificent tourist sites and attractions, ranging from Botswana’s Okavango Delta and Zimbabwe and Zambia’s Victoria Falls, to the unexplored splendours of the Angolan woodlands and Namibia’s Caprivi Strip.
