Zakouma

Declared in 1963, Zakouma suffered between 2002 and 2010 one of the worst poaching massacres documented in recent African history: armed bands on horseback out of Darfur killed roughly 4,000 elephants, 95% of the park's population, to feed the illegal ivory trade. Since 2010 the non-governmental organisation African Parks has run the park directly in partnership with the Chadian government, putting in a far more intensive system of surveillance and patrolling that has allowed the elephant population to recover and start growing again for the first time in decades, making Zakouma one of the most cited recoveries in recent African conservation. The surviving elephants, though, still show extreme fear of people, bunching into herds far larger and denser than usual — a survival strategy learnt through the years of slaughter.