Hluhluwe-iMfolozi

Declared in 1895, it is the oldest game reserve in Africa and directly responsible for saving the southern white rhinoceros from complete extinction: by around 1900 the subspecies was down to a handful of animals confined to this very region, and the strict protection and later breeding programme within the reserve — known from the 1960s as Operation Rhino — allowed the world population to recover to the roughly 16,000 alive today, the vast majority direct descendants of that original group.