Conservation for Biodiversity

In the early 20th century, most of Zambia's rural areas supported wildlife at levels similar to that seen in national parks today, and the 'big five' game animals were widespread outside reserves and parks. Of them today, the rhinocerous is almost extinct, the elephant and lion are found almost exclusively in parks and the African buffalo is found in or close to parks. Only the leopard, thanks to its nocturnal habits and ability to secrete itself in trees and rocky hills, is to be found outside parks. Of the other large animals, only the spotted hyena, nile crocodile, hippopotamus, and lechwe are found in numbers outside parks.

The cause of this decline is the four-fold increase in human population in the last fifty years and consequent loss of habitat, especially of forest and woodland. Although commercial farming and ranching is responsible for land-clearing and the elimination of carnivores and competing herbivores, the amount of land used commercially is actually small, and the more widespread and less intensive subsistence farming known as chitemene shifting cultivation is more to blame (responsible for about 9000 km² of woodland deforestation per year), along with charcoal production (responsible for about 2000 km² of woodland deforestation per year).

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