read the e-mail. The sender, a naturalist named Rod
Tether who was to be my guide in Zambia, added: “You
may want to bring along a pair of shoes that you don’t
mind getting wet.”
Bangweulu is a miraculous, 6,000-square-kilometer
expanse of marsh in northern Zambia. It is also one of
the last homes of the iconic, elusive shoebill—a
prehistoric-looking bird with an 2.5-meter wingspan
found only in the remotest swamps of Africa. Few people
have seen one. Rod has, though.
Having traveled with Rod on other adventures—a
hippo bit our canoe in half on an earlier trip in western
Zambia—I suspected that “some wading” would involve
us plunging up to our necks through swamps like the
explorers David Livingstone and Henry Morton Stanley
would have done 150 years earlier.
The reality wasn’t far off. In Bangweulu, you seem to
paddle through the sky, so brightly are its endless blues
reflected in the water. We crossed lily ponds that would
have made an Impressionist painter swoon, their white,
mauve, and blue flowers floating amid clumps of
phragmites and papy r us. A s we waded, dra gg ing our
canoes, using distant trees as way-finders and jumping
between broken dikes in pursuit of a mysterious beast,
it felt as if we were on a quest from an antique time.
I had come to Zambia, a landlocked country in the
heart of southern Africa, to experience two very different
ecosystems—and two equally distinct models of
conservation. We began in Big Five territory, at South
Luangwa Natural Park, where the family-run Shenton
Safaris operates two long-established camps. One of the
oldest national parks in Zambia, South Luangwa is an
outstanding model of the traditional relationship between
tourism, community and wildlife.We then flew to the remote world of
Bangweulu, where African Parks—a donor-led
conservation NGO working in some of the
continent’s most vulnerable, inaccessible
places—has opened a way for visitors to
experience these extraordinary wetlands. On
the butterfly-shaped map of Zambia this is not
a huge distance, essentially just up a
vein in the right wing. But the adventure I had
in these two very different ecosystems tells a
deeper story about how humans and wildlife
might find a way to share the planet—to the
benefit of all.WE SET OUT ON OUR first game
drive in South Luangwa just as the sun began
to set. Rod sat behind me as we entered the
reserve, following the beam of the spotlight on
our vehicle as it traversed the bush in the fast-
falling night, the maraca sound of the cicadas
and the sweet dusty smell of the river valley
drifting in through the windows.
“Puku—and leopard!” Rod cried, as the
spotlight jumped. Pukus are small antelope, and
we had inadvertently saved one from a violent
end. Just 10 meters away, its head down and its
shoulders rolling, was a huge leopard, orange-
gold in the light.
“I know t his leopa rd,” sa id Sylvester
Mbaama, our driver and local guide. “He has a
big territory.” A gentle Zambian with eyes as
quick as Rod’s, Sylvester possessed a deep
knowledge, updated daily, of the lives of the
creatures we encountered.
“Are there many leopards here?”
“Many! This is perfect habitat for them.”
South Luangwa’s roots go back to 1949,
when Nfetsu, the chief of the region’s Kunda
people, created a private game reserve at the
urging of the British conservationist Norman
Carr. Carr went on to invent the model that
many safari companies now follow, seeking to
empower local people through employment
and training, development, and tourism
designed to promote conservation. All around
us was evidence of his legacy: an environment
so rich with life that we encountered a bird or
beast at every twist in the track.
Our home in South Luangwa was Mwamba
Camp, a cluster of thatch-and-bamboo huts on
the banks of the Mwamba River, which runs
along the park’s eastern edge. Each of the four
guest chalets is open to the sky, allowing night
breezes to take the place of air-conditioning.
From my bed I stared upward, through a
mosquito net and a layer of mesh, to branches
seem ingly hung w it h sta rs. The whistling of
tree frogs and the whooping of hyenas made up
the soundscape until dawn, when doves and“WE’LL NEED
TO DO SOME
WA DI NG I N
ORDER TO
LOCATE THE
SHOEBILL,”