Comoe

Declared in 1968 over an earlier game reserve, it is the largest protected area in West Africa and has been a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve since 1983, valued for preserving an unusual ecological transition between savannah and rainforest at the same latitude. Through the Ivorian civil war (2002-2011) the park was left with next to no effective management and suffered severe poaching, which cut down its populations of large mammals and led UNESCO to place it on the List of World Heritage in Danger between 2003 and 2017; since the conflict ended, recovery programmes backed by international support have brought its elephant and other key populations back markedly.