Niassa National Reserve is one of the last true epic wild areas left in the world. It’s a vast and diverse wilderness, located in the Northern most part of Mozambique against the Rovuma River. Niassa is the perfect example of a true African wilderness that is under increasing threat of losing it’s lion and elephant populations to poaching, and urgently needs interventions, in the form of community based projects, to turn the tide on poaching. Our mission at Custodians is to ensure that high biodiversity areas, such as Niassa, are preserved. Niassa Wilderness is a private nonprofit trust, focussed on fighting illegal poaching to ensure the sustained preservation of the Niassa Reserve.

“Our mission is to help save the biodiversity of the Niassa Reserve, a sacred and prehistoric African wilderness. The third largest protected area in Africa, located in northern Mozambique. The Niassa Reserve holds the largest and most viable elephant population in Mozambique, together with a Jurassic geographical, physical, and faunal diversity.

 

 

Niassa Wilderness, the name of our concession in the Niassa Reserve is Block L7 on the South Eastern Bank of the Lugenda River, covering an area of 1 million acres (450,000 Ha). Our project was awarded in 2000, the first concession in the Reserve. We are proud of our contribution to the success of the Niassa Reserve over the last 17 years. We have recently pivoted into a private donor-funded nonprofit trust, combating illegal wildlife trade for the preservation of free-roaming elephants, wild dogs, lions, and locally endemic species (Niassa wildebeest, Boehm’s zebra, and Johnston’s impala).

More recently, with the dramatic increase in co-ordinated elephant poaching due to the demand for ivory. We decided in late 2015 to direct all our efforts to anti-poaching and law enforcement, in order to combat this illegal wildlife trade and help to preserve this sacred place.

We believe that by centrally linking communities in these efforts, jointly we can help to secure our concession (Block L7), thereby helping to ensure the safety and security of the whole of the Niassa Reserve.”

Read more about Niassa Wilderness and their projects here – niassawilderness.com