their wars, raiding villages.
“No,” she said. “Not yet.”
Before 2017, Antonínová told me, “everything
in Pendjari was based on mistrust and conflict.”
AP contracted to assume full management
authority while trying to work collaboratively
with all parties, for the benefit of wildlife, land-
scape, and local people. “There is no other way,”
she said. It’s the African Parks model. Either you
trust us, she said, or you don’t.ONCE A YEAR, at the end of the dry season,
Garamba National Park celebrates Ranger Day,
a festival of martial display and appreciation
of those who carry the Kalashnikovs and the
responsibility for defending the park’s wildlifeAntonínová and her partner, a Canadian
named James Terjanian, came to Pendjari at the
start of AP’s contract, he as park manager and
she as a sort of co-manager, until having a young
family compelled them to relocate. As always,
building the law enforcement capacity was an
urgent challenge. From just 15 poorly trained
guards, the force at Pendjari has grown to about
a hundred solid rangers.
Antonínová was in Zakouma in 2012 when the
rangers died at Heban, and she was in Garamba
when the LRA burned the village near the
headquarters in 2009. Pendjari National Park
presents different challenges. You don’t have
armed horsemen here, galloping in to plun-
der ivory, I noted. Or armies marching in from
Majete Wildlife Reserve
MALAWI
Dancers from Tsekera
village, near Majete,
perform the Gule
Wamkulu (Great Dance),
invoking ancestral
spirits—believed to
reside in birds and
other wildlife—to bring
rain or ease conflict.
This traditional dance
is reenacted for park
tourists, generating rev-
enue for communities.
Majete, once empty of
wildlife and economic
vitality, now thrives.
132 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC