African Parks, the Barotse Royal Establishment and Zambia’s Ministry of Tourism have renewed their long-term partnership agreement to jointly manage Liuwa Plain National Park.
The renewed mandate includes a portion of the Upper West Zambezi Game Management Area, an important part of the broader Liuwa ecosystem. Liuwa hosts the second-largest wildebeest migration in Africa and, according to African Parks, this extended area is critical to the migratory movements that sustain it.
Liuwa Plain was African Parks first management partnership, beginning with a transitional agreement in February 2003 followed by a formal partnership in 2004. The park has one of the oldest conservation histories in Africa, dating back to the 19th century when the King of Barotseland, Lubosi Lewanika, appointed his people as the custodians of the landscape. The Lozi people continue to live within the park within a community of around 12 000 people.
Over the past two decades, the partnership has helped restore wildlife populations and ecological processes across the landscape while protecting and strengthening traditional rights and practices, particularly fishing. Liuwa is home to healthy populations of lion, hyena, wild dog and cheetah alongside its wildebeest migration. Wildlife populations have recovered to the extent that Liuwa now contributes animals supporting restoration efforts elsewhere in Zambia, including recent translocations of wildebeest and zebra to Kafue National Park.
African Parks CEO Peter Fearnhead says: “Few landscapes in Africa carry a conservation story as old or as deeply rooted as Liuwa’s. It is a legacy of two Litungas: King Lewanika, who proclaimed these plains a wildlife sanctuary in the late 1800s, and His Majesty Litunga Lubosi Imwiko II who chose nearly 25 years ago to carry that legacy forward through this partnership. To have walked this road alongside His Majesty, the government of Zambia and the people of this landscape has been one of the great privileges of African Parks’ journey – and we are deeply honoured to continue walking it together.”
