top of page

Challenges to Kaza, a Border Conservation Area

Kaza is Africa's largest conservation landscape, encompassing national parks, game management areas, communal conservancies on farm land – and a great deal of wildlife, including 75% of Africa's elephants and 18% of its lions, in an area of 520 000 square kilometres – as large as France. Five years since Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe signed a treaty bringing Kaza into existence, a symposium was held in Victoria Falls at the beginning of November under the motto “Where have we come from, where are we now, and where are we going?” Two hundred and forty delegates from governments and NGOs involved in Kaza, many of them scientists, met to evaluate the progress of the conservation area. Russell Taylor, representing WWF in Namibia, who assisted the Kaza secretariat to organise the symposium, stated in a presentation that despite their large number, elephants in the area are under threat due to habitat loss: encroachment from farming and urban development.

Massmo Relsig

bottom of page