N. LUANGWA NATIONAL PARK

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With its meandering rivers, tumbling waterfalls and healthy lion and buffalo populations, ZAMBIA'S NORTH LUANGWA NATIONAL PARK is one of the great wilderness areas in Africa. Its status as such, together with the involvement of the local people in keeping it that way, is due largely to the efforts and enduring commitment of the Frankfurt Zoological Society and its North Luangwa Conservation Project.

I first met Hugo and Elsabé van der Westhuizen, the leaders of the North Luangwa Conservation Project (NLCP), when I was on an overland trip through southern Africa in 2000. Three hours' drive from the nearest town and deep inside North Luangwa National Park, they and their team of 11 Zambian colleagues were working closely with the Zambian Wildlife Authority towards the effective conservation and management of North Luangwa National Park. Their dedication to their mission made an enduring impression and I returned two years later, eager to report more fully on their far-reaching activities.

Hugo met me in Lusaka and together we flew north-eastward. After a while the woodland below us was replaced by the rivers and floodplains of the Luangwa Valley, which stretches more than 700 kilometres from the Zambezi River and contains a number of Game Management Areas (GMAs) and four national parks, notably North Luangwa and South Luangwa. Looking down, I reflected that the valley, formed by tectonic forces similar to those that had created the Great Rift Valley, is blessed with rich volcanic soils and abundant water that account for its impressive concentrations of game. The whole area is an ecological transition zone between southern African and East African faunas and harbours several endemic subspecies, including Cookson's wildebeest and Thornicroft's giraffe, and the near-endemic Crawshay's zebra.

So what is special about North Luangwa National Park in particular? Extraordinarily diverse habitats that include grassland, mopane, miombo and mushitu woodland, substantial populations of lion, buffalo and Cookson's wildebeest, the 700-metre-high ramparts of the Muchinga Escarpment and, above all, large areas of wilderness. Whereas South Luangwa National Park has enjoyed tourism success for 30 years or more, its northern counterpart remains fundamentally a wilderness area, with just three camps open for only a few months of the year. When the rains come, the camp operators pack up their gear and the only permanent residents left in the park are the members of the NLCP.

We had been flying for more than two hours when Hugo aimed his Cessna at a small cluster of buildings lying roughly midway between the lush escarpment and the Luangwa River. The project's headquarters comprise an airstrip, a hangar, six or seven simple houses, workshops and a garage, all strung along the Lubanga River. We gathered for cowboy coffee (Hugo doesn't believe in using filters) on a verandah and watched a parade of puku, buffalo and elephant coming to drink from the clear stream as we talked about the history of the place.

Conservation and tourism in the Luangwa Valley began in the 1940s under the watchful eye of such icons as Norman Carr, but even then were concentrated in the south. When the South Luangwa and North Luangwa national parks were officially proclaimed in 1971, it was decided that the north should be left as wilderness and that game management should take place only in the south. Unfortunately, Zambia was hit hard by poaching in the 1970s and '80s (it's estimated that more than 1 000 elephants were killed annually in the valley) and thus no comparison could be drawn between the two management practices.

In 1986, American zoologists Mark and Delia Owens arrived from Botswana looking for a new study site to continue their research on lions and hyaenas. North Luangwa satisfied their criteria for a wilderness area, but only when they were established did they realise that the poaching situation was critical and that Zambia's former National Parks and Wildlife Services (NPWS) did not have the capacity to look after the area. So the project changed from pure research to assisting NPWS in all aspects of North Luangwa's management and conservation. The Owens' team equipped the scouts and bought vehicles, and started community projects to try and bring income to villages around the park.

Having supported the Owens' project in Botswana, the Frankfurt Zoological Society continued funding it in North Luangwa. However, problems arose between the Zambian government and the Owens, and in 1996 the Americans left. It seemed that the project would close down but, after negotiations with the government, early in 1998 the Frankfurt Zoological Society signed a new agreement for a further 10 years of co-operation with NPWS. Hugo and Elsabé van der Westhuizen were appointed the new project leaders.

After qualifying with a diploma in agriculture, Hugo spent four years working for South Africa's National Parks Board and has excellent practical field skills. In addition to a BSc, Elsabé has conservation experience and juggles her time between writing reports and management plans, sorting out logistical arrangements, and looking after two small children in a camp where elephants are the most frequent visitors.

With funding of US$300 000 a year from the Frankfurt Zoological Society, the NLCP sees its main objective as maintaining biodiversity over the long term in partnership with the local authorities. The Zambian Wildlife Authority pays the salaries of the 142 staff members working in North Luangwa and provides them with rifles and ammunition; the NLCP supplies uniforms, boots, radio and GPS equipment, mosquito nets and daily rations to ensure that they can do their work. The project also maintains more than 500 kilometres of roads and carries out wildlife monitoring. The hub of its activities is a control room where surveillance of the patrol teams is carried out using maps, radios and computers.

During the four days I spent in the park, Hugo was a blur moving from meetings with scouts, park officials and tour operators to supervising the workshop and building programmes and co-ordinating scout movements in the field. Having seen my fair share of national parks in Zambia, I know how quickly donated vehicles can end up on bricks through inadequate maintenance, and how many scouts are unable to perform their duties because of lack of support. Hugo, however, leads a hugely successful team effort that relies heavily on the support of well-trained and enthusiastic staff.

From the outset, the NLCP philosophy has been not only that the scouts should have the right equipment to do their jobs, but also that their home situations should be stable enough that they can leave their families for more than a week at a time. In the villages bordering the park where the scouts live, the NLCP has established building schemes to replace all the mud-and-grass houses with permanent structures made of brick. Wells have been dug so that the women no longer have to carry water from the river, and each sector has vehicles, maintained by the project, which transport scouts to and from their homes.

In 1999, when NPWS underwent a rocky transition to the self-funding Zambian Wildlife Authority, scout salaries dried up and in national parks around the country poaching started to increase. In North Luangwa, however, the morale of the scouts was so high that when the NLCP stepped in with food, the patrols continued without significant disruption until the payment of salaries resumed some months later.

In the early days the NLCP was very involved with community projects such as Mano School, which was built near the park headquarters so that children did not have to travel too far to their classes. This is still an enormously successful project, and the NLCP has begun to hand it back to the government in the belief that this is the best way to guarantee its long-term viability. The NLCP has offered educational scholarships and school tours of the park in the past few years, and it plans to expand the education programme. Industry, job creation and employment are also encouraged; currently all the project's supplies of rice, beans and maize are bought from entrepreneurs in the local community.

The NLCP hopes that the Zambian Wildlife Authority will soon be able to cover all its fixed costs to ensure the long-term viability of the park and that it and other NGOs will be able to restrict their involvement to game re-introduction, scientific research and developing infrastructure. As part of this capacity-building approach, the expensive helicopter and air patrols which were used extensively by the Owens have been phased out and foot patrols have been increased from six units to 30.

One night I shared a traditional Zambian meal of nshima, kapenta and tomatoes with one of the scout groups camped near the Luangwa River. The scouts had new uniforms and camping gear, rifles, radios and GPS equipment and seemed in good spirits. During the week they had already been on patrol, Hugo had relayed to them news about their families and asked for reports from the field. The situation in the park seemed to be stable, they said, but sometimes they found snares and heard the sounds of gunfire from neighbouring GMAs. They thought it was the work of local villagers hunting for the pot rather than commercial poachers. All incidents, large or small, were carefully logged on GPS and reported to the control room for analysis.

Zambia has traditionally relied on hunting (which brought in US$3-million a year) to support conservation activities, but since 2001 there has been a moratorium on hunting that has apparently had more to do with stamping out corruption than with controlling the rapid decline in animal populations. Now there is a strong lobby to lift the moratorium and start a well-managed and regulated hunting industry in the GMAs around national parks.

Although the NLCP is critical of the way many hunting operations have conducted their business in Zambia in the past (including the luring of lions and leopards out of the safety of the park and into the GMAs), it would support a well-managed industry if it were to donate part of its income to the Zambian Wildlife Authority and to local communities in the GMAs. Without income, it argues, the villagers associate wildlife with dangerous predators and crop damage, and it is difficult to instil in them a conservation ethic. Hunting also gives access to protein, an important consideration in an area not traditionally used for cattle farming; in any event, says the NLCP, game management is a more conservation-friendly land-use system than cattle ranching.

Photographic safaris, too, can provide income, and many people believe that, from environmental and ethical points of view, they are more acceptable than commercial hunting safaris. As businesses, they are also more transparent to control and maintain. At present the main income from photographic safaris for North Luangwa comes from Buffalo, Mwaleshi and Kutandala camps, which together contribute about US$30 000 a year to the Zambian Wildlife Authority and local communities. This, however, is only a small fraction of the income required. The difficulty with these camps is that they are open for only a few months a year and, because of their remote location, are expensive to maintain.

But there are plans afoot for North Luangwa. The NLCP is funding a management plan, now in its final stages, that is being undertaken by the Zambian Wildlife Authority's planning unit and will include local communities, tour operators and local government agencies as the main stakeholders. The plan recognises the significance of North Luangwa as a pristine wilderness area, but also addresses the need for tourism opportunities to be increased. It has therefore designated the southern two-thirds of the park as wilderness or semi-wilderness, with plans for three more tourism sites. These will be for exclusive walking safaris only, with limited vehicular access. The rest of the park has been earmarked for general use and will get two new tourism sites and a new road.

The NLCP has also recently completed work on a new camping ground outside the park's borders. Situated in the forests near the camp headquarters at Mano, it has three sites, each with private showers and toilets, and aims to offer visitors travelling Zambia's northern circuit affordable access to the park. The camp will be run and managed by the local community and all profits will go directly back to it. The NLCP hopes this will improve conditions for the locals and get them involved as stakeholders in tourism and conservation. I talked to the chief and the camp committee after they had had a meeting with Hugo and they were very excited about the new project. 'We will call it "Natwange", which means "celebration",' they said. 'If you provide good service, tourists will come back and back - if you do not, they won't,' Hugo replied.

Other benefits proposed that are intended to increase tourism are improvements to the roads in North Luangwa, made with the assistance of other aid agencies, and the construction of a permanent pontoon over the Luangwa River (at present the river restricts access to North Luangwa and South Luangwa for much of the year). The pontoon will enhance the position of Natwange as a springboard into the northern circuit, making it a more popular destination to explore. Overall, the future for tourism looks rosy - as long as a way can be found to implement these changes without impacting too heavily on North Luangwa's wilderness atmosphere.

On my last day in the park, Hugo took me to where a 'rhino fence' was being built just south of the headquarters. The fence itself is not particularly sturdy - about one metre high and made up of just three or four flimsy strands of wire - but the implications for North Luangwa National Park and Zambia as a whole are vast. It has been built to contain five to eight black rhinos which the NLCP and Zambian Wildlife Authority hope to introduce in the coming year.

The Luangwa Valley was once the stronghold for black rhino in Zambia, with between 4 000 and 12 000 animals, but since the poaching of the 1970s and '80s there have only been occasional rumours of sightings and certainly no viable populations in the country. Early in 2001 the NLCP and Zambian Wildlife Authority drew up a rhino re-introduction plan and, if current negotiations with South African National Parks are successful, the first consignment of rhinos could be flown in soon. KwaZulu-Natal Wildlife and other conservation authorities will be approached in two years' time for a further 12 to 15 animals so that the gene pool can be enlarged to create a viable founder population of at least 20 animals.

The rhinos will be stocked at less than one animal per 10 square kilometres in two patrolled areas enclosed by the 'rhino fence', which has been designed to keep the rhinos in but allow as much movement as possible of other game. The fence will be removed once adequate monitoring and security systems have been put in place.

Those who have followed the ups and downs of conservation in Zambia will find it truly amazing that one day soon black rhinos may again walk free in a Zambian national park. Much credit for this and all the other achievements of the past 16 years must go to the Frankfurt Zoological Society and its NLCP, and the enduring relationships which they have forged with the Zambian Wildlife Authority and the scout community working in this wonderful park.

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