And the elephants of Zakouma, after decades
of mayhem and terror, have resumed producing
young. Their population now includes about 150
calves, a sign of health and hope.THREATS OF VIOLENT INCURSION remain severe for
Zakouma but are worse still for Garamba National
Park, in the northeastern corner of the Demo-
cratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Garamba is
threatened and battered from all sides.
AP has managed Garamba since 2005 on a
partnership contract with the DRC’s Institut
Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature
(ICCN). Garamba’s landscape is a mosaic of
savanna, dry bush, and forest, harboring the
DRC’s largest population of elephants as wellin number but deeply begrudged, since AP took
responsibility here. Incident. 24 October 2010.
Zakouma NP. 7 elephants, one records. Another:
19 December 2010. Zakouma NP. 4 elephants. The
plaques resonate like tolling bells. Amid the row
of them is another, different but equally terse:
Incident. 3 September 2012. Heban. 6 Guards.
The murderous ambush by poachers of a half
dozen rangers, on a hilltop called Heban, is a
dark memory and an abiding incentive for vigi-
lance within the culture of Zakouma.
Notwithstanding those losses, AP has
stanched the flow of elephant blood. Since 2010,
only 24 elephants have been killed, and no ivory
lost. The janjaweed have been repelled, at least
temporarily, toward softer targets elsewhere.
Pendjari National Park
BENIN
The last lions in West
Africa belong to a
critically endangered
subpopulation, and
this young male is one
of roughly a hundred
at Pendjari. The park,
along Benin’s northern
border, helps anchor a
three-country park sys-
tem that UNESCO calls
the W-Arly-Pendjari
Complex. It is a sizable
island of hope for West
African wildlife.
124 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC