World's Largest Conservation Area Spans Five African Countries

The best chance of protecting endangered species it by protecting the ecosystems that allow them to thrive and giving them the greatest buffer possible from human intervention.

Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA), a new wildlife conservation area created in 2011 (but in the works for years), hopes to accomplish precisely that. Rather than using arbitrary national borders (why would animals care about human borders?), KAZA unites five different countries - Angola, Botswana, Nimibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe - to create an amount of protected land almost the size of Italy!

The advocates of the new area, like Lisa Steel, director of the WWF's Namibia program, believe, "The intent is to make it a leading conservation area and tourist destination in the region ... where communities are the main beneficiaries." However, there are skeptics who have seen these schemes signed and lauded in the past only to fall apart due to lack of funding, regulation, or resources from the participating governments.

I certainly hope KAZA succeeds! The people of these African countries deserve the economic boom of eco-tourism, and the wildlife deserves to have plenty of well-protected lands to hide, hunt, and roam free.

[via Neatorama]