Greater Zakouma Ecosystem — Government–NGO Performance-Based Conservation Financing (Chad)

In 2010 the Government of Chad entered a long-term co-management partnership with the NGO African Parks to reverse a collapse in Zakouma National Park's wildlife: industrial-scale ivory poaching had reduced the park's elephant population from an estimated 22,000 in the 1970s to just 454 by 2010, with poachers killing an average of 500 elephants a year between 2002 and 2010. In 2017 the government extended the arrangement to the neighbouring Siniaka-Minia National Park and Bahr Salamat Faunal Reserve, creating the Greater Zakouma Ecosystem, a contiguous complex of roughly 28,162 km².

Under African Parks' management, poaching in Zakouma fell to an average of about two elephants killed per year after 2010, and the elephant population had recovered to around 600 individuals by 2020, with African Parks reporting a further increase since. The ecosystem is also a stronghold for the Kordofan giraffe, with independent field reporting putting the local population at around 1,200 individuals — roughly half of the world's remaining Kordofan giraffe, according to African Parks — alongside a recovering, if still small, lion population estimated at approximately 130 animals.

Management is funded through a mix of philanthropic and bilateral sources, including the Annenberg Foundation, the European Union, Fondation Segré, the Silent Foundation, the Wildlife Conservation Network's Elephant Crisis Fund and Lion Recovery Fund, and the US State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, alongside tourism revenue that African Parks reinvests in park operations and community programmes such as teacher training; the Greater Zakouma Ecosystem is reported to be the largest employer in its region.

As a caveat, the arrangement is a long-term government-ceded co-management and donor-funding model rather than a codified per-hectare payment scheme, and it is not fully insulated from political risk: on 6 October 2025 the Government of Chad unilaterally terminated its management mandates with African Parks over concerns about anti-poaching efficacy and cooperation, before reversing the decision and reinstating the partnership just 11 days later, on 17 October 2025. The lion population has also not shown the same recovery as elephants and giraffe despite prey-base recovery — a reminder that even well-resourced NbS partnerships neither lift every species uniformly nor are immune to abrupt governance shocks.

Read more: https://www.africanparks.org/the-parks/zakouma

Read the full analysis: https://www.africanparks.org/the-parks/zakouma