Reviving the Luangwa: Roads, Water, Animals (5-minute Video)

The drive from Lusaka to Nyamvu Game Reserve, on the banks of the Luangwa River in eastern Zambia, normally takes 7 hours.

It took Zaeed Patel thirty-six hours in his first rainy season in the area.  He had to sleep on the side of the road.

This is remote country, and in 2005 there was nothing on it — no way in, nowhere for staff to live, and no water away from the Luangwa River once the rains stopped.

Everything a reserve needs had to be built in sequence before the reserve could be protected.

For much of the year, there's water everywhere. Then the dry season comes, the pans and streams disappear, and wildlife is drawn to the one source that lasts—the Luangwa River.

By now the concession had become a reserve — roads, camps, water, a trained staff.

But wildlife numbers were still low, so management decided to reintroduce a variety of species.

Around two thousand two hundred animals in all were brought in, every one a species that had occurred here naturally before but had been poached out.