Hwange

Declared in 1928 over what had been the royal hunting ground of the Ndebele king Mzilikazi in the 19th century, Hwange is now the largest national park in Zimbabwe and holds one of the greatest elephant populations in Africa, at more than 40,000 animals. Since the park has no permanent rivers, the survival of its wildlife depends almost entirely on a network of more than 100 artificial waterholes, many of them originally pumped by solar or diesel power since the 1930s, without which the animals could not last the long dry season. The park made international headlines in 2015 when Cecil, one of its most studied lions and fitted with a GPS collar, was illegally shot by an American trophy hunter after being lured beyond the park boundary — an episode that set off a worldwide debate about the ethics and regulation of trophy hunting in Africa.