North Luangwa’s Most Important Buffer Zone: Conservation in Chifunda GMA

Upper Luangwa Valley, Zambia

Chifunda sits along one of the most important — and least visible — interfaces in African conservation.

For more than 40 miles, it runs parallel to North Luangwa National Park, forming one of the largest buffer areas protecting the park's eastern boundary.

This is not a boundary in the conventional sense. There are no fences. Wildlife moves freely between park and Game Management Area, crossing the Luangwa River and dispersing into surrounding habitat. What happens in Chifunda directly affects what happens in North Luangwa.

A Critical Buffer Landscape

North Luangwa is one of Africa's most intact wilderness areas. It is also one of the most dependent on the integrity of the surrounding landscape.

Chifunda functions as that buffer. It absorbs pressure, supports movement, and provides space for wildlife beyond the park boundary. Without it, the park becomes exposed.

North Luangwa also holds one of Africa's most significant black rhino recovery programs — one of the genuine conservation success stories of the continent. That program depends, in no small part, on the integrity of the surrounding landscape. The Luangwa River corridor — running the length of Chifunda's eastern boundary — is the primary access route for illegal hunting pressure from outside the system. Protecting what is inside North Luangwa requires managing what happens on the outside.

Partnership at Scale

Chifunda is not managed by a single entity.

It operates through a system that includes the Department of National Parks and Wildlife, which sets quotas and holds regulatory authority; traditional leadership and Community Resource Boards, which co-manage natural resources and represent community interests; Kovango Safaris, the licensed operator holding the Hunting Concession Agreement; Frankfurt Zoological Society, which has operated in the North Luangwa ecosystem for 38 years and coordinates conservation and anti-poaching work across the broader landscape in partnership with DNPW through the North Luangwa Conservation Programme; and supporting partners, including Epic Safaris.

Epic Safaris works within this system in partnership with Kovango Safaris, contributing to conservation and community outcomes across the area. This model — built on shared responsibility across government, community, operator, and conservation organization — is how large, remote landscapes remain viable.

The Frankfurt Zoological Society Connection

Frankfurt Zoological Society's presence in the North Luangwa ecosystem is one of the longest-standing and most credible conservation partnerships in Africa. The North Luangwa Conservation Programme — which FZS leads in partnership with DNPW — covers a vast area of the upper valley, with Chifunda as a direct buffer zone on the park's eastern boundary.

The relationship between Epic, Kovango, and FZS in this landscape is operational. The 40-plus miles of Luangwa River frontage that Chifunda holds is both the landscape's most defining feature and its most critical vulnerability — the entry point for illegal activity moving toward the park from the east. Coordinating anti-poaching efforts along this corridor, maintaining patrol presence in a remote and difficult landscape, and ensuring that the communities living along the river have an economic stake in wildlife rather than against it are shared objectives that require shared effort.

FZS brings 38 years of ecological knowledge, community relationships, and conservation science to that effort. Epic and Kovango bring operational presence, commercial structure, and the sustained investment that makes year-round engagement in this landscape viable. Neither is sufficient without the other.

Protecting a Connected Ecosystem

Work in Chifunda is shaped by one core reality: wildlife does not recognize boundaries. Protecting North Luangwa therefore requires more than managing the park itself. It requires maintaining wildlife across the broader landscape, reducing pressure along the boundary, and ensuring that adjacent areas remain functional habitat.

This is where Chifunda plays a critical role — and where the partnership between operator, conservation organization, and community is most consequential. An area of this size, with this level of ecological importance and this degree of exposure along the river boundary, cannot be adequately protected by any single entity working alone.

Communities and Conservation Are Linked

The long-term viability of Chifunda depends as much on people as on wildlife. Communities in and around the GMA rely on access to water, local employment, and shared economic benefit from the landscape. When those needs are met, pressure on core wildlife areas decreases, settlement patterns stabilize, and conservation outcomes improve. When they are not met, pressure increases and the system begins to fragment.

Work in Chifunda therefore includes supporting access to clean water — including borehole infrastructure installed in 2025 — contributing to community infrastructure, fulfilling the formal community obligations embedded in the concession framework, and reinforcing the link between conservation outcomes and local benefit. This is not separate from conservation. It is central to it.

The concession framework governing Chifunda was negotiated directly between Kovango Safaris, Chief Chifunda, the Chifunda Community Resource Board, and DNPW before the concession was granted. Community leadership was at the table. The obligations that flow from that framework — toward community development, law enforcement support, infrastructure, local employment, and meat distribution to villages — are legally binding, not discretionary.

How Outcomes Are Shaped

Within this system, outcomes are influenced by how activity is structured. Through its exclusive marketing rights and close working partnership with Kovango Safaris, Epic Safaris helps shape how hunting is conducted in the concession — which clients come, which professional hunters guide them, and how the approach to harvest is calibrated over time.

This includes a consistent focus on selectivity and appropriate species and age selection, with harvest decisions informed by the ecological assessments and wildlife monitoring conducted in coordination with Frankfurt Zoological Society and DNPW. The goal is not simply to fill an allocated quota, but to ensure that activity in the landscape is aligned with its long-term sustainability. All activity is conducted within the framework of the operator's concession agreement and in coordination with DNPW and conservation partners.

Presence in a Remote Landscape

Work of this kind depends on consistent presence. Wakatuli Camp — located within the concession and operated by Kovango Safaris — serves as the seasonal field base for activity in the area. From here, operations extend across the landscape, supporting monitoring, logistics, community engagement, and ongoing coordination with conservation partners.

Chifunda is genuinely remote. Road access is difficult and seasonal. The landscape is large and the challenges — poaching pressure, human-wildlife conflict, deforestation at the valley margins — are continuous. That remoteness is part of what makes a committed, year-round conservation partnership essential rather than optional.

Why This Matters

Chifunda is not widely known. But its role is clear. It protects one of Africa's most important parks — and one of its most significant black rhino recovery programs — not by isolation, but by connection. By maintaining a functioning buffer, keeping communities economically invested in wildlife, and coordinating anti-poaching efforts along the most exposed boundary of North Luangwa National Park.

The conservation case for Chifunda is straightforward. What happens in this landscape has consequences beyond its boundaries — and those consequences are better when the landscape is actively, responsibly managed than when it is not.

This is one landscape. The record continues.