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Formation | 2000 |
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Headquarters | Johannesburg, South Africa |
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Website | www |
African Parks is a non-governmental organization (NGO) focused on biodiversity conservation through protected area management, established in 2000 and headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa. It was founded as the African Parks Management and Finance Company, a private company, then underwent structural changes to become an NGO called African Parks Foundation, and later renamed African Parks Network. The organization manages national parks and protected areas throughout Africa, in collaboration with governments and surrounding communities. African Parks manages 22 protected areas in 12 countries as of May 2023, and employs more than 5000 staff. [1]
The Johannesburg-based nonprofit conservation organization African Parks manages national parks and protected areas throughout Africa, in collaboration with governments and surrounding communities. [2] [3] [4] In addition to park management, the organization: actively manages and protects wildlife biodiversity, contributes to community development, works to reduce poaching and increase law enforcement and tourism, fundraises, improves infrastructure, and supports local residents. [5] [6] [7] African Parks' motto is "a business approach to conservation". [5] [8]
African Parks currently[ when? ] manages 22 protected areas in 12 countries, [9] [10] including W National Park and Pendjari National Park in Benin, [11] Chinko in Central African Republic, [12] [13] Ennedi Natural and Cultural Reserve, Siniaka-Minia Faunal Reserve, and Zakouma National Park in Chad, [4] [14] Boma National Park and Bandingilo National Park in South Sudan, Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, [5] Liwonde National Park, Majete Wildlife Reserve, Mangochi Forest Reserve [15] [16] and Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve in Malawi, Bazaruto Archipelago National Park in Mozambique, [17] Odzala-Kokoua National Park in the Republic of the Congo, [18] [19] Akagera National Park and Nyungwe Forest in Rwanda, [3] [9] Matusadona National Park in Zimbabwe, Iona National Park in Angola, and Bangweulu Wetlands, Liuwa Plain National Park and Kafue National Park in Zambia. [6] [20]
African Parks employs more than 1,100 rangers, as of 2020. [21] According to The Washington Post , the organization "has the largest counter-poaching force of any private organization on the continent". [21] Peter Fearnhead co-founded and continues to serve as African Parks' chief executive officer (CEO). [9] [6] Michael Eustace, [22] [23] Paul Fentener van Vlissingen, Anthony Hall-Martin, and Mavuso Msimang are also credited as co-founders. [24] [25] Msimang, who once served on the Military High Command of Umkonto we Sizwe and is former CEO of South African National Parks, is as of June 2021 [update] Emeritus Board Member of the organisation. [26] Vasant Narasimhan, M.D was appointed as African Parks’ Chairman of the Board in December 2022. [9] Other board members include Hansjörg Wyss who founded the Wyss Campaign for Nature and H.E. Hailemariam Dessalegn who served as Prime Minister of Ethiopia (2012-18) and Chair, African Union (2013-14). [27]
African Parks has received funding from the European Union, Adessium Foundation, Global Environment Facility, Howard G. Buffett Foundation, [28] International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, National Geographic Society, [29] Nationale Postcode Loterij, Swedish Postcode Lottery, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), [30] United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), Walton Family Foundation, World Wide Fund for Nature, and Wyss Foundation, among others. [8] [31] [32] A financial endowment funded by Fentener van Vlissingen directs approximately US$700,000 towards African Parks' annual operations. [8] The organization's budget was approximately US$35 million in 2016. [33]
African Parks was established in 2000 as the African Parks Management and Finance Company, a privately held company. Msimang and Hall-Martin, who previously served as director and CEO of South African National Parks, respectively, [34] [35] held director roles at the newly formed company, as did Fentener van Vlissingen. Fearnhead, then head of commercial development for South African National Parks, initially served on the African Parks' advisory board. [34] Plans for the company started forming after van Vlissingen met with Nelson Mandela in 1998, [36] and early supporters included the U.S. Department of State and World Bank. [37]
The first protected areas to be managed by the company were Majete Wildlife Reserve and Liuwa Plain National Park, starting in 2003. [6] [7] African Parks had planned to manage Zambia's Sioma Ngwezi National Park, but efforts stalled. [34] [38] The holding company was moved from Johannesburg to the Netherlands, and went through some structural changes. Eustace, Fearnhead, Hall-Martin, and Msimang became minority shareholders in African Parks B.V., and continued to serve on the company's board. The African Parks Foundation was created in the Netherlands and became the company's only shareholder. African Parks B.V. was liquidated in 2004. [25]
During this transition, African Parks entered into agreements to manage Ethiopia's Nechisar National Park and Omo National Park in 2004 and 2005, respectively. [24] [39] [40] However, the organization announced plans to terminate these two agreements in December 2007, [41] and stopped managing parks in Ethiopia in 2008. [42] African Parks had also entered into agreements to manage Garamba, [43] as well as two Sudanese marine parks in Dungonab Bay and Sanganeb Atoll. These agreements did not give the organization full, long-term control, like most of their other contracts. [25] More internal changes were made to African Parks after Fentener van Vlissingen died in 2006. The organization's headquarters returned in Africa, and African representation returned to the board. [25]
The organization began managing Akagera with the Rwanda Development Board in 2009, [28] [44] Zakouma in 2010, [45] [5] and Chinko in 2014. [12] African Parks entered into a memorandum of understanding with Chad's government in February 2015 to establish Ennedi as a protected area, which became a Natural and Cultural Reserve. [46] Malawi's government entered into agreements for African Parks to start managing Liwonde and Nkhotakota in August 2015. [6] [47] The Wyss Foundation funded African Parks' lion reintroduction project in Akagera in 2015. [3] [31] During 2016–2017, African Parks worked to relocate 500 elephants and other animals from Liwonde and Majete to Nkhotakota. [48] [49] [50] Prince Harry assisted with the translocation, [9] which was done in partnership with the Malawian Department of National Parks and Wildlife, and funded largely by the Nationale Postcode Loterij. [2] [6]
In March 2017, African Parks received $65 million from the Wyss Foundation to fund conservation efforts in Malawi's Liwonde National Park and Majete and Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserves, as well as Rwanda's Akagera National Park, and supported the addition of up to five other protected areas to African Parks' management portfolio. [3] African Parks entered into a ten-year agreement in mid-2017 to help manage Benin's Pendjari National Park, [11] then agreed to manage Mozambique's Bazaruto Archipelago National Park in December. [17] In 2018, the organization signed an agreement to manage Ennedi Natural and Cultural Reserve. [14] In 2024, they celebrated 20 years of operation in Majete Wildlife Reserve [51] .
In 2022, African Parks Rangers were been accused of committing human rights abuses and atrocities against indigenous people living in the parks going back decades. [52] The allegations include rape, torture, and forced evictions of the Baka Indigenous people in the Odzala-Kokoua National Park in the Republic of Congo. [53] [54] As the allegations were reported upon again in 2024 and after an unnamed board member was alerted by Survival International, African Parks announced that they had launched an investigation through an external law firm. [55] They also accused Survival International of failing to cooperate with their investigations, which prompted the head of Survival International's conservation campaign to state that African Parks "had the money to conduct their own investigation" and it was "their responsibility when we raise a problem to go there and investigate". [55] Survival International has continued to report the human rights abuses and escalated the reports through a submissions to the UN Special Rapporteur including allegations against other organisations such as the World Wide Fund for Nature. [56] African Parks released a statement detailing specific actions taken including commissioning an investigation by a London-based legal firm (Omnia Strategy LLP) in partnership with two specialist human rights legal counsels from Doughty Street Chambers to investigate all the allegations. [57] The results of the investigation are expected in early 2025. [58]
African Parks has been accused of neocolonialism. The Financial Times reported that the organisation through American and European donors has "quietly accrued management control of 22 parks in 12 African countries, with a total area of 20mn hectares". [59] In November 2024, new allegations emerged involving a group of women who had been promised a meeting with a high-level African Parks manager to discuss the destruction of crops by elephants. Following the manager's failure to attend the meeting and subsequent to the women's complaints the eco guards allegedly "forced them to leave by whipping them and beating them, which led to a woman being actually trampled on and losing her baby." [58]
Species reintroduction is the deliberate release of a species into the wild, from captivity or other areas where the organism is capable of survival. The goal of species reintroduction is to establish a healthy, genetically diverse, self-sustaining population to an area where it has been extirpated, or to augment an existing population. Species that may be eligible for reintroduction are typically threatened or endangered in the wild. However, reintroduction of a species can also be for pest control; for example, wolves being reintroduced to a wild area to curb an overpopulation of deer. Because reintroduction may involve returning native species to localities where they had been extirpated, some prefer the term "reestablishment".
Akagera National Park is a protected area in eastern Rwanda covering 1,122 km2 (433 sq mi) along the international border with Tanzania. It was founded in 1934 and includes savannah, montane and swamp habitats. The park is named for the Kagera River which flows along its eastern boundary feeding into Lake Ihema and several smaller lakes. The complex system of lakes and linking papyrus swamps makes up over a third of the park, which is the largest protected wetland in Eastern-Central Africa.
Zakouma National Park is a 3,000 km2 (1,158 sq mi) national park in southeastern Chad, straddling the border of Guéra Region and Salamat Region. Zakouma is the nation's oldest national park, declared a national park in 1963 by presidential decree, giving it the highest form of protection available under the nation's laws. It has been managed by the nonprofit conservation organization African Parks since 2010 in partnership with Chad's government.
Garamba National Park is a national park in the north-eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo covering nearly 5,200 km2 (2,000 sq mi). It is among Africa's oldest parks and was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1980 for its protection of critical habitat for northern white rhinoceroses, African elephants, hippopotamuses, and giraffes. Garamba National Park has been managed by African Parks in partnership with the Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature since 2005.
Liwonde National Park, also known as Liwonde Wildlife Reserve, is a national park in southern Malawi, near the Mozambique border. The park was established in 1973, and has been managed by the nonprofit conservation organization African Parks since August 2015. African Parks built an electric fence around the perimeter of the park to help mitigate human-wildlife conflict. In early 2018, the adjacent Mangochi Forest Reserve was also brought under African Parks' management, almost doubling the size of the protected area.
Dja Faunal Reserve, located in southeastern Cameroon, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site inscribed in 1987. Causes of inscription include diversity of species present in the park, the presence of five threatened species of mammal, and lack of disturbance within the park. It is managed by Dja Conservation Services (DCS), which is led by a conservator. The Reserve receives significant support for its management from many projects funded by international partners and supporters of conservation in Cameroon.
Paul Fentener van Vlissingen was a Dutch businessman and philanthropist who was CEO of SHV Holdings for three decades. He contributed to the development of game reserves in Africa and purchased the Letterewe estate in Scotland in 1978. He pledged the right to roam there prior to the passage of the Scottish Land Reform Act of 2003.
The servaline genet is a genet species native to Central Africa. As it is widely distributed and considered common, it is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List.
The wildlife of Rwanda comprising its flora and fauna, in prehistoric times, consisted of montane forest in one third the territory of present-day Rwanda. However, natural vegetation is now mostly restricted to the three national parks and four small forest reserves, with terraced agriculture dominating the rest of the country.
Odzala-Kokoua National Park is a national park in the Republic of the Congo. The park was first protected in 1935, declared a biosphere reserve in 1977, and granted official designation by presidential decree in 2001. Odzala-Kokoua has approximately 100 mammals species, and one of the continent's most diverse primate populations. The nonprofit conservation organization African Parks began managing the park in collaboration with the Ministry of Forest Economy, Sustainable Development and Environment of the Republic of the Congo in 2010.
Majete Wildlife Reserve is a nature reserve in southwestern Malawi, established as a protected area in 1955. The reserve's animal populations were decimated during the late 1970s and 1980s due to poaching and other human activities. Majete has been managed by African Parks since 2003, when the nonprofit conservation organization entered into a public–private partnership with the Malawi Department of National Parks and Wildlife (DNPW). Since then, wildlife has been restored, the park has achieved big five game status, and tourism has increased.
Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve, is the largest and oldest wildlife reserve in Malawi, near Nkhotakota. The park's hilly terrain features dambos and miombo woodlands as the dominant vegetation, which support a variety of mammal and bird species. Poaching has greatly reduced the number of elephants and other large mammals in Nkhotakota, but conservation efforts to restore the elephant population started when African Parks began managing the reserve in 2015.
The Central Zambezian miombo woodlands ecoregion spans southern central Africa. Miombo woodland is the predominant plant community. It is one of the largest ecoregions on the continent, and home to a great variety of wildlife, including many large mammals.
NBS Bank Limited, commonly referred to as NBS Bank, is a commercial bank in Malawi. It is licensed as a commercial bank, by the Reserve Bank of Malawi, central bank and national banking regulator.
The national parks of Rwanda are protected ecosystems and wildlife reserves located within the borders of Rwanda in east central Africa. In 2020, these protected natural zones include the Volcanoes National Park, Akagera National Park and Nyungwe Forest. Maintenance of the national park system, as well as tourism infrastructure and promotion of the parks, is managed by the Rwanda Development Board (RDB) with assistance from government ministries.
The Southeast African cheetah is the nominate cheetah subspecies native to East and Southern Africa. The Southern African cheetah lives mainly in the lowland areas and deserts of the Kalahari, the savannahs of Okavango Delta, and the grasslands of the Transvaal region in South Africa. In Namibia, cheetahs are mostly found in farmlands. In India, four cheetahs of the subspecies are living in Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh after having been introduced there.
The Northwestern Congolian lowland forests is a tropical moist broadleaf forest ecoregion that spans Cameroon, Gabon, the Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and a minuscule part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It forms part of the larger Congolian rainforests region in Central Africa. The region is noteworthy for very high levels of species richness and endemism. It is home to a core population of the critically endangered Western lowland gorilla. There are also large populations of forest elephants.
Smart Parks is a UK-based charity that specializes in providing aerial surveillance and monitoring services through the use of unnamed aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly knowns as drones. The organization was founded in 2012 and launched publicly in 2013, and operates as a registered charity in the UK and a private foundation in the Netherlands. The organization was formerly named ShadowView.
The Wyss Foundation is a charitable organization based in Washington, D.C. Founded by philanthropist Hansjörg Wyss, it was established in 1998. The foundation has provided funding to conservation, environmental journalism, education, museums, and progressive political advocacy.
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