It was late November and Zambia was still waiting for the rains. The air was hot, the earth a dried husk, the delicate, feathered heads of papyrus motionless under a dazzling blue sky. I’d just come from Zimbabwe and Botswana where wildlife was struggling from an extended drought. Elephant calves had perished from a lack of food and there was trouble brewing — elephants on crop raids, talk of culling quotas — all along the edges of the protected zones which made up the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area, or KAZA TFCA. This vast contiguous territory, larger than Germany and Austria combined, connects wildlife-rich territories in Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
那是11月下旬，尚比亞仍在等待雨季的到來。空氣炙熱，大地乾裂，紙莎草那纖細的羽狀頂端在耀眼的藍天下一動不動。我剛從辛巴威和波札那過來，那裏的野生動物正因長期乾旱而很難生存。小象因缺乏食物而死亡，麻煩正在醞釀——大象襲擊農作物，討論捕殺配額——這些問題在構成卡萬戈-贊比西河流域保護區(KAZA TFCA)的保護區邊緣不斷出現。這個廣闊的連續區域，比德國和澳洲的總和還大，連接了安哥拉、波札那、那密比亞、尚比亞和辛巴威的富有野生動物的領地。