Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve
Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve (also known as Nkhotakota Game Reserve or Nkhotakota Wildlife Preserve), 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. History The park has been vulnerable to charcoal burning, logging, and poaching. In 2012, the Global Environmental Facility invested $850,000 through the "Effective Management of the Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve" project to improve the management of the reserve, with a focus on its Bua watershed area. The nonprofit organization African Parks started managing the reserve in 2015, and immediately began working to make Nkhotakota "ecologically and socially sustainable" by increasing animal populations and reducing poaching by hiring and training rangers. The organization's twenty-year agreement with Malawi's government through the Department of National Parks and Wildlife was administered by the Public Private Partnership Commission. During 2016–2017, African Parks relocated approximately 500 elephants from Liwonde National Park and Majete Wildlife Reserve to Nkhotakota. The $1.6