Niassa

Niassa National Reserve was established in 1954 in northern Mozambique, between the provinces of Niassa and Cabo Delgado and next to the Tanzanian border, and at some 42,000 km² it is the country's largest protected area and one of the largest in Africa.

It protects an all but continuous expanse of miombo woodland, the dominant formation in tropical southern Africa, crossed by the Lugenda and Rovuma rivers and dotted with granite inselbergs that rise out of the woodland. Its scale and its low degree of fragmentation make it one of the few places where large mammals can make seasonal movements without obstacles.

It holds populations of African elephant, African wild dog, lion, buffalo and local subspecies such as the Niassa wildebeest and Crawshay's zebra. Its elephant population was decimated by poaching for ivory between 2009 and 2015, with losses of more than 70%, and surveillance and management have been reinforced since then through agreements with conservation organisations. The reserve forms part of a transboundary conservation area with the Selous Game Reserve in Tanzania, and some forty thousand people live within its boundaries, which makes reconciling different uses the central axis of its management.