wholesale slaughter by well-armed poachers,
until Zakouma became an uneasy refuge for the
largest remnant, about 4,000 elephants.
Then, during the first decade of this century,
more than 90 percent of Zakouma’s elephant
population was butchered, mostly by Sudanese
horsemen riding in from the east on paramili-
tary raids for ivory. (See “Ivory Wars: Last Stand
in Zakouma,” National Geographic, March 2007.)
These raiders are known as janjaweed, an Arabic
word loosely translated as “devils on horseback,”
though some ride camels. Their origins lie among
nomadic Arab groups, highly skilled equestrians,
who, once armed and supported by the Sudanese
government, became ruthless strike forces during
the conflict in Darfur and, later, freelance ban-
dits lusting after ivory. For a while it seemed they
might kill every elephant in Chad.
Then in 2010, at the invitation of the Chad-
ian government, a private organization called
African Parks (AP) took over management of
Zakouma, and the trend came to a sudden stop.
Founded in 2000 by a small group of conser-
vationists concerned with such hemorrhagic
losses of the continent’s wildlife, the nonprofit
AP contracts with governments to restore and
run national parks —with the stipulation that it
will exercise full control on the ground. AP pres-
ently manages 15 parks in nine countries, bring-
ing outside funding, efficient business practices,
and rigorous law enforcement to some of Africa’s
most troubled wild landscapes.
At Zakouma, law enforcement involves more
than a hundred well-trained and well-armed
rangers, mostly men but also women, deployed
through a coordinated and strategically sophis-
ticated operation. Leon Lamprecht, a South
African who grew up in Kruger National Park,
where his father was a ranger, is AP’s park man-
ager of Zakouma.
“We are not a military organization,” Lam-
precht said, while showing me a trove of weapons
and ammunition in the armory, a locked shed
on the ground floor of headquarters. “We are a
conservation organization that trains our rangers
for paramilitary.”
Peter Fearnhead, the CEO of African Parks and
one of its co-founders, bridled at the notion that
the organization is highly militarized. But he still
stressed, when we spoke by phone, the need for
well-armed security in the parks—not just for
the protection of wildlife but also for people in
nearby communities who may be subjected to
rape, pillage, and plunder by the next wave of
demons on horseback. “They recognize that it’s
the park that brings stability, safety, and security
for them,” Fearnhead said.
Lamprecht drew me a pyramid diagram of the
levels of tasks as AP sees them. You build the base
of the pyramid with law enforcement, infrastruc-
ture, solid staff—“area integrity.” After that you
can advance upward: community development
for local people, tourism, and ecological research.THE NERVE CENTER of this effort is the central
control room, where fresh intelligence on ele-
phant locations and any troubling human
activity—an illegal fishing camp, a gunshot, a
hundred armed horsemen galloping toward the
park—is used to determine ranger deployments.
The sources of information include reconnais-
sance overflights, foot patrols, GPS collars on
elephants, and handheld radios placed with
trusted informants in villages around the park.
The daily briefing begins at 6 a.m. There’s a
long desk with a pair of computer monitors and,
on the wall, a large map decorated with stickpins.
On the morning of my visit, Tadio Hadj-Baguila,
an imposing Chadian man in a turban and camo
fatigues, head of law enforcement for the park,
presided in French.
Lamprecht explained to me that the black pins
on the map represent elephants. The green pins
are regular ranger patrols—known as Mamba
teams—six rangers to a team, bushwhacking
through the park on five-day rotations. Their
movement is dictated by the elephants, which the
Mambas follow discreetly, like guardian angels.
And this, said Lamprecht—pointing to a
red-and-white pin set aside from the map—
represents a Phantom team, two rangers, doing
long-range reconnaissance. Those are so secre-
tive that not even the radio operator knows their
locations, only Lamprecht and Hadj-Baguila.
The data are collated each morning and after-
noon. “We play chess twice a day,” Lamprecht
said. Across the chessboard are janjaweed and
every other sort of poacher who might test the
boundaries of Zakouma.
High on the wall, above the maps, hangs a
series of plaques commemorating the losses, lowThis article is supported by the Wyss Campaign
for Nature, which is working with the National
Geographic Society and others across the globe to
help protect 30 percent of our planet by 2030.
120 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC