The ability of animals to move freely from place to place allows them to find food, breed, and establish new home territories. In fact, the unimpeded movement of animals and the flow of natural processes sustain life on Earth.
Understanding wildlife “corridors”, which sometimes cross national borders, helps WWF and our partners protect wildlife and reduce human-wildlife conflict.
KAZA—the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area—is the world’s largest transboundary conservation area on land. It spans parts of five southern African countries (Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe). This region provides critical habitat for a diversity of wildlife like lions, African wild dogs, and the world’s largest population of African savanna elephants, and allows movement across borders and between conservation areas.
WWF scientists have helped identify six areas in KAZA that are critical to the movement of wildlife across national borders, focusing on three corridors where wildlife populations and their habitats are secured and connected. We identify these corridors using current and historical animal movement and migration routes.
In the map above, protected areas are shown in green, KAZA in dark beige, and key transboundary elephant movements are in magenta.
