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A chunk of territory in southern Africa about the size of France has long been considered one of the last strongholds of the African elephant. The Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area, better known as KAZA, straddles Angola, Zambia, Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe and was believed to hold as many as 250,000 elephants.
But all is not well there. The latest statistics from the Great Elephant Census, an ambitious elephant-counting project led by Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen’s private company, Vulcan, paints a grim picture in part of KAZA’s Zambian portion.
“The Kwando area of southwestern Zambia is experiencing the worst poaching of any major savanna elephant population,” said Mike Chase, the coordinator of the project.
The survey results for Zambia, released in March, show that overall elephant numbers in the country are stable. But in the southwest, especially in the 3,100-square-mile (5,000 square kilometers) Sioma Ngwezi Park between the Zambezi and Kwando Rivers, the declines have been catastrophic—an estimated 95 percent drop in elephant numbers.
KAZA is run by governments of the member countries, guided by the Peace Parks Foundation. This multinational governmental and private enterprise organization promotes biodiversity, job creation through nature conservation, and regional peace and stability through the establishment of cross-border conservation areas.
Since its formation, the Peace Parks Foundation has lauded KAZA as one of the great “African successes” and southern Africa’s “premier tourist destination for viewing elephants” and “the vehicle for socioeconomic development in the region.”
“We believe that this increased enforcement has effectively reduced poaching, said Matt Brown, the conservancy’s Africa conservation director. Brown acknowledged that “protection initiatives may need to be intensified in areas where the elephant population is facing more significant threats.”
The Zambian government has indicated that it will launch a working group to develop a plan for such areas—but time has all but run out for Sioma Ngwezi.
The danger now, warns Mike Chase, is that because Sioma Ngwezi is close to Botswana’s Okavango Delta region—the world’s largest single remaining population—it’s only a matter of time before poachers begin killing elephants there.