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Beginning our Journey with African Parks

4 min read

We are incredibly excited and proud to announce the launch of a new partnership with African Parks

African Parks is a non-profit conservation organisation that takes on direct responsibility for the rehabilitation and long-term management of Africa's protected areas.

The work that African Parks have achieved over the past 20 years is simply staggering. We urge you to find time to dive into their website and learn about how their initiatives have directly protected species, habitats and communities. 

© Naude Heunis

“African Parks was created to set a new paradigm for protected area management. Since our beginnings, we have stayed true to our mission – effectively managing and protecting national parks for the benefit of people and wildlife. From Majete in 2003 to now 17 parks in 11 countries with over 13.3 million hectares under management, we have accelerated and scaled our work knowing that we are in a race against time. What is not well-managed today will be lost forever.” - African Parks

© Kyle de Nobrega

African Parks have already facilitated and overseen projects of truly epic proportions. From re-introducing Rhinos to Rwanda, to trans-locating 500 elephant across the continent, and building and supporting 17 schools around Chad's Zakouma National Park which has directly benefitted over 3,200 school children. Their work to date has been nothing short of heroic.

African Park's park management, law enforcement and community engagement are essential in their approach, and have been a deciding factor behind our commitment.

© Marcus Westberg

Our Partnership

Our partnership with African Parks will focus on our direct involvement with Malawi's Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve. 

Nkhotakota (also known as NKK) is a stunning 1,800 km2 wildlife reserve made up of forests, rivers, open plains and mountains. Despite being one of Malawi’s largest protected areas, Nkhotakota has been facing serious threats to its ongoing existence. Large-scale poaching has decimated wildlife populations: 

"The once 1,500-strong elephant population had been reduced to fewer than 100 animals, and other species were in a similarly dire state." - African Parks

Since African Parks' partnership with Nkhotakota began in 2015, over 2,000 game animals have been reintroduced into the reserve, Law Enforcement and Community teams have collected hundreds of wire snares, and close relationships have been fostered with local communities.

Nkhotakota Wilderness Reserve © Frank Weitzer

The initiatives that AP have already introduced to Nkhotakota are truly fantastic and have gone a long way towards protecting this wilderness area, however, a huge amount of work still needs to be done. 

Our Pledge

Our pledge is to give a proportion of the 5% we set aside from of our annual profits to Nkhotakota Wilderness Reserve, which are of course only made possible by our amazing clients who travel with us. Our contribution will directly help fund the development of one of Africa’s last remaining wildernesses areas. 

We have specifically chosen the Nkhotakota project exactly because it needs additional support. There are so many incredible success stories such as Akagera National Park in Rwanda, which, thanks to the great work by African Parks, is now 90% self-financing. Nkhotakota is one of African Parks' newest projects, and is one that requires the most focus and resource during these early years. It is a project that we plan to become actively involved in over the next decade. 

© Naude Heunis

Our commitment to you, our readers, is to keep you updated with the progress the park is making, and how you are directly contributing to the conservation of this wonderful park. We hope that the projects and initiatives that we have helped the park achieve will encourage you to one day visit this small corner of Africa.

The amount we contribute goes above and beyond the individual park fees our clients would already donate for the wilderness areas they travel to. 

To find out more about NKK please click the link here, or feel free to contact us at any time.

Toby Pheasant

Toby first visited Africa at the tender age of four when he accompanied his family on their first of several safari holidays. From that moment on Toby’s love affair with Africa’s nature and wildlif...

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