Zakouma National Park

Zakouma's story is one of collapse followed by recovery. In the 2000s, industrial poaching driven by the ivory trade destroyed nearly 90% of the park's elephants: from over 4,000 animals at the start of the decade, around 450 remained by 2010.

That year, management of the park was entrusted to African Parks in partnership with the Chadian government. The strategy combined aerial surveillance, trained and equipped anti-poaching units, tracking collars on matriarchs and, above all, sustained work with neighbouring communities. Elephant poaching collapsed.

The population has been climbing since and now exceeds 600. Remarkably, Zakouma's elephants form a single, extremely tight-knit herd — a behavioural response to the trauma of poaching — which can sometimes be seen in its entirety, several hundred animals moving as one.

Zakouma also holds one of the last populations of Kordofan giraffe, around 1,000 animals, along with lion, buffalo, roan antelope, tiang and exceptional birdlife: the concentration of crowned cranes and pelicans on the Rigueik pans at the end of the dry season ranks among Africa's great ornithological spectacles.